From Vietnam Trauma to Spiritual Awakening: AA Speaker – Jim S. – Bagdad, KY
AA speaker Jim S. from Indianapolis shares his journey from Vietnam War trauma to recovery. Covers Big Book work, making amends, and finding purpose in sobriety.
Jim S. from Indianapolis shares his 20-year journey in this AA speaker meeting, tracing his path from Vietnam War trauma to a profound spiritual awakening. After getting sober in 1984, Jim walks through how proper Big Book study, thorough step work, and making difficult amends transformed his relationship with his Higher Power and gave his life new meaning, especially as he faces recent health challenges.
This AA speaker meeting features Jim S. discussing how he used alcohol to manage Vietnam War trauma and other deep resentments until proper Big Book study showed him a different path. He details his amends process, including making peace with his brother and finding closure with his Vietnam experiences through visits to the Vietnam Memorial. Jim emphasizes following the Big Book’s directions precisely rather than modifying them to suit personal preferences.
Episode Summary
Jim S. opens his talk with characteristic humor, joking about being given a clock to keep track of time, but quickly moves into the serious territory of why he drank. He traces his drinking from age 14, when it helped him feel connected to older kids, through high school fun times, to the Air Force where it took on a darker purpose during his tour in Vietnam as a medic flying evacuations.
The turning point in Vietnam came during a particularly traumatic mission when a double amputee grabbed his leg, screaming that he wouldn’t make it home. Jim kicked him off to attend to other casualties, and later found the soldier had died. That night, like so many others, he drank a fifth of whiskey to forget what he’d seen, smelled, and felt. This pattern of drinking to manage trauma became his primary coping mechanism.
Returning stateside, Jim’s drinking progressed through years of broken promises, emotional absence from his marriage to his wife of 34 years, and increasing consumption. The progression accelerated when his wife started attending Al-Anon and working the steps herself. Suddenly, she stopped enabling his behavior—his dirty clothes stayed where he dropped them, the checkbook wasn’t juggled, and most unsettling of all, she seemed happy while stepping over him on the floor.
Jim first entered AA meetings in 1982, relating immediately when he heard someone read Step 1 as “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our wives were unmanageable.” He accumulated some time but never got a sponsor or worked the steps properly, still smoking marijuana and eventually convincing himself he didn’t need meetings because he could predict what people would say.
His relapse in Princeton, Indiana was swift and severe. Within a week, he was drinking over a fifth a day, needing vodka in the morning just to shave and shower, following it with Maalox when he couldn’t keep it down. He describes the insanity vividly—drinking was the only way he knew how to live normally, and without alcohol, he was completely insane.
The chocolate cake analogy becomes central to Jim’s understanding of why AA didn’t work the first time. His sponsor later explained that reading the Big Book was like reading a recipe—you could study it endlessly, but until you actually follow the directions and do the work, you won’t get the cake. Jim admits he was tweaking the recipe, adding what he liked and leaving out what he didn’t, which produced something that looked like recovery but didn’t taste like it.
A significant portion of Jim’s talk focuses on the amends process, particularly detailing the thorough approach his sponsor taught him. Rather than simply saying “I’m sorry,” Jim learned to sit down with each person, explain the specific harm he’d caused, ask if there was anything else he wasn’t aware of, listen to how it affected them, and then ask what he needed to do to make it right.
The story of making amends to his brother illustrates how profound this process can be. What started as an amend about lying about damaging his brother’s car door revealed the deeper harm—Jim had taken his brother to be a fool, thinking he was smarter and could get away with things. This realization transformed their relationship within an hour, just as the Big Book promises.
Perhaps most moving is Jim’s process around the Vietnam trauma. Unable to make direct amends to the soldier who died, Jim was directed to write a letter to an unknown name from the Vietnam Memorial, describing what was happening at the time and what he was doing with his life today. A year later, when he helped a drunk veteran find shelter, the man’s gratitude gave Jim a physical sense of warmth and closure, knowing that amend was complete.
Jim’s visit to the Vietnam Memorial provides another powerful example of how AA speaker talks on spiritual awakening often involve letting go of old resentments and finding unexpected grace. Initially overwhelmed with rage at the wall, thinking nobody cared about the dead, Jim witnessed a busload of young girls with nuns placing roses and praying for the fallen soldiers—showing him once again that his perceptions were wrong and people do care.
The talk becomes especially poignant when Jim discusses his recent diagnosis with stage 3 heart failure. Initially trying to control and manage this new powerlessness—even planning to walk out during a medical procedure to die on his own terms—Jim eventually found acceptance and discovered new purpose. Unable to work but receiving daily calls from sponsees, his home became a hub for step work discussions, allowing him more time for Step 11 and deeper spiritual development.
Throughout his share, Jim emphasizes the importance of following the AA Big Book study speaker talks and workshops precisely rather than modifying the approach. His story demonstrates how thorough step work, particularly the amends process, can heal relationships, resolve trauma, and create space for genuine spiritual growth even in the face of serious health challenges.
Jim’s journey from using alcohol to manage Vietnam trauma to finding purpose in sponsoring others shows how the program can transform not just our relationship with alcohol, but our entire understanding of powerlessness, service, and what it means to be of maximum use to others. His humor throughout, combined with unflinching honesty about his darkest moments, makes this a compelling example of how recovery can bring meaning even to our most painful experiences.
Notable Quotes
Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The first time I took a drink, I was 14 years old, and the effect that I liked was I felt connected, I felt a part of them.
You can read that recipe till you’re blue in the face. But if you actually want a piece of cake, you’re going to have to do something.
Never ever say you’re sorry. Everybody on the planet knows you’re a sorry son of a [bleep]. It’s about taking responsibility for your actions and correcting the wrongs.
The reality of the amend was I took him to be a fool. I thought I was better than he was. I thought I could get by. I thought I was smarter than he was. And that’s the harm that I caused him.
It’s amazing when I don’t leave the house and it’s just me and the cat, how little harm I can do.
Steps 8 & 9 – Making Amends
Step 4 – Resentments & Inventory
Spiritual Awakening
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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.
Hello everyone. I'm Jim Shackleford and I'm an alcoholic, and it's wonderful to be invited here today. I do so much appreciate the committee asking me and Kathy to be part of your weekend. Already I'm very grateful for the fact that you folks are giving me a clock. I think there might be a message in that. Is there a history of speakers speaking over their allotted time? [laughter]
You weren't given the clock. He just picked it up.
Okay. [laughter]
Well, we've heard a couple of great talks already this weekend, haven't we?
Some fabulous talks. I'm from Indianapolis, Indiana, and we are so fortunate to have Dudley and Marge and Jill in our community. Some wonderful things are happening in Indianapolis, and I'm sure there's wonderful things happening in your community too. I'm always amazed—maybe amazed is not the right word—I'm always overwhelmed when I see the force of God moving through people's lives. And as I continue to observe and watch that phenomenon, the enrichment of my second step continues to expand. It's a powerful force.
Dudley Early asked me if I was a little bit nervous today. And actually I'm not, because I have not the foggiest idea what I'm going to say. When I start to orchestrate things, then I get real nervous. But when I don't have a particular hard theme to talk about, then it's really interesting to hear what I have to say.
My sobriety date is October 20th, 1984. That was not the first time I came into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, though. One of the things I do want to talk about is the progression of alcoholism. And additionally, I want to talk to you about the reason why I drank.
By the way, K, you had talked about that you're a crier. I'm going to cry. I'm really going to cry. And also before I go any further, I want to introduce my wife Kathy, who is not only my wife, but she's my friend and lover and counselor and teacher. And she's been my companion now for 34 years. And the fact that she's still sitting here is a testimony that something's happening in our lives that's beyond me, because believe me, I have given her more than one reason to terminate our marriage.
What's really interesting is where I first met Dudley. The first time I met Dudley, he was representing my wife in her lawsuit to divorce me. Tell me if there's not a god in that somewhere.
I love the doctor's opinion. "Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false." Sometimes today I still have problems with differentiating the true from the false. Probably more so than I care to admit. But boy, that line about the reason I drank—for the effect—and that's exactly what I did.
The first time I took a drink, I was 14 years old, and I was with some guys that were 16 and 17 in that age group. I was in the backseat of the car with them. And God, I wanted to be part of them. They reached around and took the Coke out of my hand, opened the bottle, and poured it out, and they reached on the seat, pulled out some cherry vodka, poured it in there, and gave it back to me. And the effect that I liked was I felt a part of them. I felt connected to them, and I liked it.
My drinking proceeded through high school. What a surprise. And the effect that I was looking for then was fun and camaraderie. That was the effect I was looking for. My buddies and I would get a six or a twelve-pack and get in the car on a Friday night or Saturday night, and we would go to the local drive-in restaurants and drive laps around and try to pick up girls. And of course, all we did was try. We were never really particularly successful, but the effect I was looking for was fun and good times. And I had a lot of fun and a lot of good times.
Then in 1967 at the ripe age of 17, I graduated from high school. I had been accepted to go to Purdue University, but I did not have the economic means. And trust me, I was not an excellent high school student, so there was no scholarship. And my draft number was six. There's a man that understands what that means. And so I'm always looking for options. You know, good managers always do. And I ended up believing an Air Force recruiter, and at the age of 17, a couple weeks after high school, I went into the Air Force.
In the Air Force, my drinking took on a little bit different dimension. Again it was for fun and good times, but I sought out people who really knew how to drink, and I began to learn the fine art of drinking. You know, you just don't drink large sums of alcohol without some kind of background and training. For example, you have to know what to eat before you go out and drink. And then through trial and error, you find out what not to mix in terms of different drinks. Or when you get back to the barracks late at night and that room is spinning so bad—and I don't know why, but if I could just get the ball of my left foot on the floor and put not my total body weight, but just the right amount of pressure on that ball of my left foot, the room wouldn't spin as much. I mean, those are techniques that you have to acquire.
And I was a fairly good student at that point. It was fun and good times. Then I got orders—I was a medic—and then I got orders to Vietnam to fly Aravac. And it was at that point that my drinking began to change. The effect I was looking for was a lot different, but I was still drinking for the effect. There was a lot of craziness and insanity of what was going on day to day.
And at the end of the mission, at the end of the day, back at the base, I'd get a fifth of whiskey and get drunk because I wanted to forget. I wanted to take the edge off. I couldn't deal with what I was feeling or what I was seeing or what I was smelling. And I got drunk. And it worked. It did for me what I could not do for myself. It worked so well that I did it every chance I could, and that was the effect I was looking for.
There's one particular event that happened there that I talk about which has bearing and kind of demonstrates the change that takes place in a person's life. I was on this one particular mission and there was a fellow who was a double amputee, and I was walking down the very narrow aisle working on all these different casualties, and this double amputee grabbed ahold of my leg and he kept screaming over the roar of the engines, "Man, I'm not going to make it back to the world. I'm just not going to make it." And I kept saying, kept placating, "Yeah, you are. You got to let go of my leg. I got to go work on this other guy. I had to go suck out a tracheotomy and keep this guy's airway open. He's got to let go of my leg and he wouldn't do it. So I kicked him off of me.
And then I came back down the aisle a little while later and he was dead. I got a fifth of whiskey that night. Got good and drunk. Took it all away. Next day got out and did it again. And eventually my tour was over and I came back.
That's when I got the GI Bill. You know, you sign up for college classes, they send you a check, and then you drop half your classes. And I partied a lot. And believe it or not, I had hair at that point in time. And my primary objective was to assimilate back into American culture. So my hair grew down to here. And I partied a lot. And Kathy and I met. I'm giving some cliff notes versions. We met and we fell in love and we moved in together, and so our life began.
You're not the only one with a bad memory. After a period of time, we got married. And I don't know—I'm going to fast forward a lot of years. Whatever happened in your house, I'll wager probably happened in our house. A few dishes got broke, a few promises probably not got met. A lot of dishonesty, and certainly I was emotionally absent. Anytime I began to feel any kind of strong emotion about anything, I got drunk. I certainly distanced myself.
I had two emotions. I had rage and I had lust, and that was it. And anything in between, I just couldn't recognize or couldn't respond to it. And I was extremely absent from my marriage. Again, the effect I was looking for was I was managing my life with alcohol.
My consumption continued to get more and more, and the times that I wasn't drinking was getting less and less. And then when the pressure was on me too much, then I would quit. You know how that looks, don't you? There. I proved to you. Two weeks I won't drink. I'm going to buy a case. Back to the races again. The insanity in our life continued.
My Kathy went to Alanon. I really—I know this is a Baptist facility, but there's no other way to say it. That really pissed me off. It did. And I continued to drink for years. And my drinking continued to progress down and down and down.
And there was this point where something began to happen to me, and it happened as a direct result of Alanon. Kathy not only started going to Alanon, but she actually got involved with the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. She actually began to work the steps with others. And the result of that was my dirty clothes laid pretty much right where I dropped them. The checkbook no longer was being juggled and balanced. I found myself a lot waking up on the floor. I used to always wake up in a bed, but now I find myself waking up on the floor with my glasses kind of askew, floor burns sometimes.
And the clincher was that she was walking around the house happy. She would do things like step over me and go about her business. Literally. And I was scared. God, I was scared.
And I went to my very first AA meeting, and Ben was there. Ben was the first person I ever heard read how it works. And Ben, what he read was, "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives were unmanageable."
[laughter]People in the room laughed. I did not laugh because I related. I understood what he was talking about.
And so that was my beginning. And that was in '82. And I went back for another meeting and I didn't drink that day. And the next day I went back for another meeting and I got a big book because I said, "Get a big book, you know." And I looked at that and said, "Yep, I got one of them." It kind of went up here on the shelf. And I did not get a sponsor. And 30 days came up and I took that token, and 90 days came up, I took that token, yada yada yada.
Um, I forgot to tell anybody I was still smoking a lot of reefer, by the way. I didn't ask your opinion because I didn't want to. I get really tired of hearing some of the things at Alcoholics Anonymous. I kept hearing the same things over and over and over. And I'm a project manager. I build—I used to build federally funded projects, you know, large multi-million dollar road and bridge projects. And I worked hard that day, you understand? And Joe keeps saying the same thing over and over. So I decided, you know, I don't need to go to the meeting tonight because I can just sit here and have this meeting like in my head because I know what they always say.
And it didn't take long before you didn't really see me very much. And guess what? I found myself in Princeton, Indiana. Anyone here from Princeton? I know. Or someone asked earlier about Ohio. Is anyone here from Princeton? Okay, now I'll share with you.
I was in Princeton, Indiana. I was staying at the Holiday Inn. I had a bridge project in southern Indiana and I was staying at the Holiday Inn. And I went to the Holiday Inn, and it was a horrible band. I mean, the worst band I've ever heard in my life. So I ordered a shot of whiskey so the band would be improved, you understand? And it was controlled drinking right from the start.
Went down, and less than a week later I'm drinking over a fifth a day again. And I swear to you, I thought it was controlled drinking because I'm buying it in pints and half-pints.
Now I want to tell you about the effect that I was drinking for. When I resumed drinking, I picked up right where I left off. Right where I left off.
In the mornings, I would drink a half pint to a pint of vodka. And I would have to do that so I could shave. I would have to do that so I could get up and be able to shower and get dressed and function. And I couldn't always keep that down. So I would drink. I would follow it with mocks. Great morning drink. I'm committed, you got to understand this. I'm committed to this drinking business.
And then once I was able to do that, then I could begin to think. I could begin to put sentences together. Then I'd go to work and sometimes I'd put in a whole four and a half, five hours, maybe. And then I'd leave the job site and I'd be driving down that gravel road and I'd reach under that pickup truck and I'd pull out that pint of vodka and I'd go black with it. Get in the motel room, close the door, take another quick shower, come out, crack that second one.
And I'm drinking for the effect. And the effect is I want out. I just want out. I want the crazy thoughts to stop. And the thoughts went like this. There were like a lot of words, but they didn't make a whole lot of sense. They just rambled through my head. I shook badly. In order for me not to throw up the green bile with the little black seeds in it, I had to have a certain level of alcohol in me. The only normal way for me to live was for me to take another drink. And when I didn't have that, I was absolutely insane. That was the only way I knew how to live.
That was the effect that I was looking for. All the way through the development of my alcoholism, through the advancement of it, I was drinking for effect. The effect changed. The effect I was looking for evolved, but it was always for the effect.
I couldn't understand why Alcoholics Anonymous didn't work for me the first time. I use a lot of analogies. Bear with me. You heard about the chocolate cake. I know you people in Indianapolis have heard this—about the guy who kept coming in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous. He kept coming in and out. He went to lots of meetings, you know, 90 meetings in 90 days. He read his big book and then he got drunk and he came back and he went to meetings and he just kept going around and around. He called up his sponsor. He says, "I don't understand this. You people tell me to go to 90 meetings in 90 days and make coffee and read the big book, and I keep getting drunk. I don't get it. Why is that?"
And the sponsor says, "You got a cookbook in the house?"
He says, "Yeah."
He says, "Go get it."
So he brings the cookbook back to the phone. He says, "Is there a recipe in there for chocolate cake?"
And he goes, "Yeah."
He says, "Why don't you read that to me?"
And we all know sponsors are crazy, right? So with great reluctance, he reads—he reads the recipe. "Preheat the oven to 450, grease the pan, cup of flour, yada yada yada." And so he finishes reading, and then the sponsor says, "Okay, why don't you read that to me one more time?"
The guy says, "Listen, I'm dying and you got me reading the chocolate cake recipe to you."
He says, "Trust me. Just read it one more time."
So he did. "I'd make the frosting. Let it cool before you put the frosting on." And he finishes it. And then the sponsor says, "Okay, read that to me one more time."
Of course, this guy's reading it real fast now because he's, you know, he wants to get through it real quick. And then the sponsor said after he finished, he says, "Now cut me a piece of cake."
You can read that recipe till you're blue in the face. But if you actually want a piece of cake, you're going to have to do something. I don't know about you people, but if I like chocolate, I like chocolate cake. Left to my own devices, I'll read it and say, "Yeah, that's a nice recipe, but I like a lot of sugar." So instead of putting a cup of sugar in, I'm going to put in three cups of sugar. And I'm not real keen about vanilla, so I'm not really going to put that in. And I'll tweak it. I'll tweak that recipe to suit my own what I think are my own needs.
And I may end up with something that looks like a cake, but it's probably not going to taste like that cake. And I was challenged that if I wanted the same cake that Bill and Bob had, that I need to do what Bill and Bob did—that I need to follow the black ink on the white page. And when I see a question mark, that means I need to answer the question. And when I see hints like "next we launched," that's a hint.
I went to my very first conference, and there was a fellow named Franken out of Chicago. And we all know the out-of-town speakers are so wise. No one in your home group—by the way, my home group is a "dignitary sympathy group."
[laughter]There's no dignitaries and there's no sympathy. It was a group conscience to call the group that I wanted. We meet on Tuesday nights and I wanted to name the group the "Monday Night Procrastinators Meeting."
[laughter]But that didn't go over real well. So it's a dignitary sympathy group. I got a fabulous—but that's another story.
And now I'm having a senior moment. But I went to hear Frank, and Frank was talking about what is a real alcoholic. You might have been at that conference, Dudley. I don't know.
And Frank said, "What is a real alcoholic?" and he stood in front of all—I know there must have been 600 people in that room—and he stood, and I'm sitting way in the back like newcomers do, and he said, "Well, what we're going to do is we're going to make an alcoholic."
So he had this imaginary test tube, and he asked the audience, he says, "What's it take to make an alcoholic?" and someone in the back yelled, "Resentment."
So he reached over like this and put that in. He says, "What else?" and someone else yelled, "Fear," and he went like that, and "self-centeredness," and the list went on and on. There were about seven or eight things that were called out. And then he paused and said, "What's the one thing no one talked about? Nobody said alcohol."
And I had one of those V8 moments. He went on to say, "Here we have this test tube full of stuff, and we shake it up and we shake it up and it's in our lives and we shake it up so much, and then we don't know what to do with it. And we put a little alcohol in there to shave it off, to smooth it out, to make it okay. And that works. And then except that quantity doesn't work anymore. And then we put a little more in, a little more. And then often what happens is a spouse or an employer or a judge or somebody will help you pull some of that alcohol out, and we may feel better for a while."
I think Jill talked about the difference between relief and a solution. Pull the alcohol out, and what happens is we start sleeping better and we eat a little better, and people pat you on the back. "You're doing so good, you look good," but we don't ever do anything with the test tube of stuff. And that was me.
Resentment. Do you people have resentments? I don't know. I want you to understand the kind of alcoholic I am.
Early in our relationship, Kathy and I went horseback riding. I don't like horses. I know I'm standing in the middle of horse country. But the fact is I don't particularly like horses. And Kathy went to go horseback riding. So we went to the stable, and I asked for the oldest, slowest horse that they had. And they gave me this old slow horse. We leave the barn and we go about 1500 feet down out of the barn, and this horse takes off at a canter—I think it's called a canter—and for the next mile my anatomy is getting crushed to the saddle, and I'm livid. Needless to say, I can't get this darn thing to stop. It comes to a creek, I think I'm glad you like this, Marge.
[laughter]The horse comes to a creek and it stops to get a drink of water, and I get off this horse and I walk around the woods looking for a big stick because I'm going to do this horse what it did to me.
[laughter]And I couldn't find one that would really do the job. And Kathy finally caught up and she saw my state of mind and didn't say a word. And finally I said the heck with it, and sort of and I walked away. As far as I know, that horse is still standing there in that creek.
Now I want to share with you how I could just really work with that resentment for years and into sobriety. Whenever I would go to the grocery store to buy dog food, I'd read dog food labels looking for horsemeat. I'd take that horsemeat that dog food. I'd throw it in the bowl, and then when I throw that bowl down on the table, in my head I'm thinking, "Take that, you son of a—resentment."
[laughter]Um, I told that story at the lobby of the Music City Roundup down in Nashville, and the person I was sitting in front of looked at me, and they didn't laugh. They looked at me and said, "That'll get you drunk."
[laughter]That'll get you drunk, man. It did.
And you know what? They were right.
I happened to be in a workshop. That's the thing we do up in Indianapolis. Real quick side note—that's where a bunch of us get together. We make a commitment to each other that we're going to work the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and honestly. We sit down. We read what the big book says. And we only use the big book. We read what the big book says about the first step. We all answer the questions. We share with each other our experience. We do the first step together. And then collectively we go on to the second step. And that's what we do. We do it frequently and often. As a matter of fact, anyway, so I was in this workshop, and I went back, and I happened to—what a coincidence—happened to be at the fourth step. And I like footnotes in the fourth step. Oh, by the way, here's this resentment, and it also showed up in my fear inventory too, by the way. And of course, I shared it when I did my fifth step. And I'm happy to report to you that I haven't had a need or a compulsion to read a dog food label since.
[laughter]I encourage you that when you're engaged in this process, look at the totality of who you are, not just your drinking.
Time moves on, and I want to talk a little bit about amends. My sponsor—a lot of you people know my sponsor—Gary B. And Gary's 40 years sober now. After I asked him to be my sponsor, he and his wife Julie made a decision that they really wanted to finish up their amends, and they sold their house to come up with the equity out of it to finish their amends. Had I known that Gary Brown was going to do something like that, I would not have asked him to be my sponsor. Can you imagine going to someone like that and trying to get a little slack cut to you on amends? Not going to happen. Not going to happen.
He shared with me a process on making amends. One of the instructions he gave me was never ever say you're sorry. He says, "Everybody on the planet knows you're a sorry son of a—I don't want to hear that." He says, "It's about collecting, taking care of, and correcting the wrongs and taking responsibility for your actions."
And he gave me a process. And the process was that of course make it, try to do it in person if at all possible, and make that amends. And sit down and tell the person the harm that you've caused them. And then after I do that, then ask them the question: "Is there anything else that I've done that I'm not aware of that I've harmed you?" And then my job is to listen. I don't know about you, but I did some blackout drinking. There's harm out there that I have no idea that I caused. There's plenty that I am aware of, but there's others out there. And then my job is to listen. Not inject the buts—don't you understand?—but to listen.
And then after that's on the table, now everything's on the table. Everything possibly knowable about this particular relationship is on the table. And then he told me to ask them the question: "Do you need to tell me how this has affected you?" That's a tough question to ask. And then my job is to listen. And then the last thing after that's done is to say, "What is it I need to do to make this right? How do I square the books?" And then to take that action.
I first thought amends was about—well, I damaged this amount of property to you, and I believe I owe you $500, and so I'm going to come to you and tell you how I've harmed you, and then I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do, and then I'm going to dictate to you how I'm going to do it. Sounds an awful lot like managing my life, but that's how I initially approached it. I found that I got to be a lot freer as a result of this process.
There's all kinds of higher powers, by the way. There's one higher power that helped me figure out what my amends was, and he was a judge. The judge helped me figure that out. He told me I could pay $500 a month, which I did for 19 years. And I'm happy to report that that amends now is taken care of.
There's an amends that I want to share with you that involved my brother, which was quite an eye-opener for me. My brother and I didn't particularly get along. You may find that hard to believe.
Although sometimes we got along. Here's a sidebar. My brother and I used to do a lot of drinking together. We had a lot of fun. I remember once I told Kathy I was going to meet him for lunch. We're going to meet him for lunch, you know, get a sandwich. And I went and met him and we had a beer, and then on the third or fourth beer we started talking about the virtues of Coors beer. This is 1976, I think it was. Coors beer wasn't sold at that point east of the Mississippi. You know the virtues of Coors beer—mountain water and all that. He said, "Let's go get a Coors beer." So we got in his truck and we decided we'd go to St. Louis to get some Coors beer. We got there and they didn't sell it there. So we thought, "Well, we'll just keep driving west till we find it." And we found it in Kansas City, Kansas. We walked into the liquor store and they had a big display of Coors beer, and I said, "Yeah, you can sell it?" He goes, "Yeah." He says, "How much you want?" And we said, "All of it." So we bought $600 worth of Coors beer.
[laughter]Twenty-four, 25 hours later, when I got back home, Kathy was a little upset with me. But I mean, that's the kind of things that my brother and I did when we were drinking. But we also got into fights, and he always won. By the way, I was in this particular workshop, and I was remembering some harm that I had caused him back when I was 16 years old. And I avoided looking at that because I knew he had caused me more harm than I had ever caused him. You know, when he hits you in the face a few times, you don't want to approach him.
And the harm that I caused him when I was 16 was I borrowed his car. It's a big Pontiac Grand Prix. Beautiful machine. I borrowed it for a date, and I put a big crease in the passenger door. And when I returned the car, I parked it across from his apartment so he would see the driver's side, and then he would go to work, and at some point in time in the future, he'd discover the crease, and I just pleaded innocent. And that's what I did.
Well, as a result of this workshop, I needed to take responsibility. And I hadn't talked to him in seven years, even though he lived here in town. And I met him at a restaurant. They had glass all the way around, and it was a Steak and Shake, and I did that for a reason because I wasn't sure of his response. And I proceeded to tell him the harm that I caused. I went through the process that I talked about. And he said there wasn't anything else. And I hadn't anything else on the paper. I thought it was pretty much a done deal. And I reached in my pocket and I put the money on the table. I showed up with a lot of money, and the numbers seemed fair and equitable.
And the big book talks about the fact that within an hour of relationship, the things will melt and relationships begin to literally—that literally happened. And I thought it was pretty much a done deal. And then something amazing happened at that very moment. And what was amazing was that I found out that wasn't the amend at all. The reality of the amend was I took him to be a fool. I thought I was better than he was. I thought I could get by. I thought I was smarter than he was. And that's the harm that I caused him. It had nothing to do with his car door. Not really.
I never would have known that until I began the process of the amend.
The guy that I kicked off my leg. How do I make an amends to him? The man—or rather, several men in a workshop I was in at the time—I hadn't told anyone about that. And they said, "Man's dead, how do you make an amends?" And the guy said, "Well, you need to write this guy a letter. And in the letter, tell him what was going on at the time, what your confusion and the chaos was. But most importantly in this letter, tell him what you're doing today. Tell him what you're trying to do with your life today."
I just wanted to get well. I really wasn't out seeking God. I just wanted to get well. And so that's what I tried to discount. I said, "Well, how can I write him a letter? I don't know his name." And they said, "But get a photograph of the Vietnam Wall and pick a name." So that's what I did, and I wrote the letter. And I was waiting for something miraculous to happen, and nothing happened. I just did the action. I followed direction.
It was about a year later. I was on the telephone answering service, and I got this call from a veteran who was drunk, calling from a pay phone, who wasn't looking to join Alcoholics Anonymous. He was just looking for a place to sleep that night. And I called around and I found a halfway house that had a bed. And then I called up another friend of mine. I said, "Can you pick this guy up? He's at so and so intersection and take him over there?" And they did.
And then the guy who I sent on the 12-step—he came back and said, "I just thought you'd want to know that this guy—he didn't say he was going to quit drinking. He didn't say he was going to join Alcoholics Anonymous. He just kept saying he couldn't believe that somebody cared, that he was going to sleep under sheets, under a roof, and that somebody cared."
And then I thought back to that letter because that's one of the things that I wrote—that I wanted to care again. And this physical sense of warmth came over me. And it took a long time for me to have that feeling. I thought, "Wow, that one's done."
Was in another workshop years later, and I was with Mike—Mike L. And Mike is also a Vietnam vet. And we were talking toward the conclusion of that workshop that maybe someday we'll go to the Wall. And I was afraid to go to the Wall because I was afraid of what was going to happen—meaning my emotions. And he said, "Yeah, well, if we ever get a chance, we'll go do that."
And of course, two weeks later, Kathy comes home from work, and her employer is going to send her to Washington DC to attend the conference. It's a free ride. I need, you know. And so here I am. You know what honesty is? Say what you mean and do what you say. So he went. And what happened at the Wall—what I was afraid was going to happen—did happen. I saw that, and I just lost it.
And I went back to the Wall the next day, and I ended up—there's a directory there. You look up the names, and