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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. >> Thank you.

My name is Keith Lewis and I'm an alcoholic. >> I'm just delighted to be here with you. I uh it's very much like a homecoming for me.

I uh I lived in Birmingham for a couple years in the 80s and uh so flying into Birmingham and uh was was sort of like I used to fly it every week make me crazy. Uh I had a job that had me on airplanes all the time and uh and I'd fly in and out of Birmingham all the time and uh lived down there for a couple years and um so it was a lot like coming home. I I I was I really want to thank you so much for asking me to uh take part in this.

Um um it it's it's always, you know, humbling to be asked to do anything in Alcoholics Anonymous, but especially something that uh has the history that that's here and the reverence for the program that's here. And I really want to thank Kim and John for picking me up and we stopped and had lunch and had some some great conversation. I really enjoyed it.

Uh uh I I I enjoy talking to Kim these months while we're getting uh uh getting ready to for this weekend. And and I'd also like to thank my wife who isn't here. Um but at this very moment, she's praying for me.

She she always prays when I speak. I told her I'd be talking about 8 hours this weekend and she said I was going to be on my own most of the time. But u but she really does.

We have a little room in our house we've given to God. God gave us the house, so we give him a room, which seems fair somehow. And um and she goes in and closes the door and and uh and prays that uh and I always ask her to pray uh that you not hear what I say, but you hear what God would have you hear.

Uh and they're usually different, especially in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's a wonderful organization. I can't tell you how many times people have come up to me and said, you know, that story you told about such and such saved my life.

I never told that story, you know, uh but they heard that story and and and that's what matters. Uh you know, in Alcoholics Anonymous, we we just carry the message and uh and then you hear the message and they're often not the same message, but it doesn't matter. Uh God arranges all those things.

And so I'm really really delighted to be here. I'd like to ask, not to embarrass anyone, but is anybody here fairly new in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous? Great.

I am so pleased you're here and and and I want to congratulate you for being here. Um I could not have been around this many people when I was new. I'd have been hanging on the ceiling or something like that.

I mean, I was uh very very nervous and very quick when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. And and you're most welcome here. And if there's anything you don't understand, just grab somebody.

What I'd like to do this weekend with your permission is to sort of drift through the steps. Okay? I'm not going to teach you about the steps and I'm certainly not going to read to you from the books.

you I assume you have your own book or if you don't you can borrow one. Just kidding. And um and so I'm not going to read you from the book, but what I wanted to do was talk something about the principles of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous while going through the steps and and maybe share in a general way how I took them or in some cases how I didn't take them and and what the results were.

Before I get started, I want to uh to uh mention something about Maggie. Um, it's it's a great honor to to be here with you. Uh, I was telling Maggie uh before dinner that uh that we had a mutual friend.

It was a man named Bob Brown and and Bob got sober in a biscane room and in the 70s he moved to Washington DC and he and and he and I developed a a friendship that's u that can only happen in alcoholic synonyms. are truly brothers. And Bob passed away a few years ago.

And uh one of the stories I love, there's a a clubhouse in the Washington DC area out in Bethesda. And um and there was a lady there who uh sort of ran the place and uh she came in and Bob was doing something and uh she began to chew him out and Bob listened to her for about 30 seconds and he said, "Just a minute." He said, "If I can interrupt you just for a moment." He said, uh, he said, "I I just think it's fair to tell you that I got sober in a Biscane room and Maggie used to chew me up." And a woman says, "All hell, forget it." And that was the end of that. And um, true story.

Really a true story. Um, I I like to to to mention Bob because um, like I say, Bob became one of my great friends and and I watched Bob Brown die of emphyma and um, and you would think a pretty horrible death. and and it was really it was quite the contrary.

I I saw a man who for 3 years couldn't even leave his home and we started a meeting in his house and uh and uh he made every meeting and um he heard fifth steps every week and two days before he died he heard a man's fifth step. He he constantly uh worked this program uh and he learned that in Atlanta with Maggie. Um, I I remember uh one of our good friends had been diagnosed with brain cancer and he could drive and uh and uh Bob he would drive around and get newcomers and take him out and Bob would prop himself up in bed and talk to him.

And I never want to forget that picture as long as I live. It was sort of my version of uh of the man in the bed. Uh only in this case, the man in the bed was the one that was doing the giving.

Um I came to Alcoholics Anonymous in on May the 13th, 1973. And I'm one of those fortunate people from the time I came to Alcoholics Anonymous until now, I have not had to take a drink. So, it's something over 26 years.

And um and I'm convinced that that's the case because I had a very severe case of alcoholism and u I didn't have a light case and even when I arrived here uh I had a very very very serious case of of alcoholism. Uh, I also have to tell you that I'm one of those people who came to Alcoholics Anonymous by way of a treatment center. Now, some people don't like that.

And uh, but I mean that's how it happened for me. I I uh was uh living in the basement of a house in the Skidro section of Washington DC of 29 years of age. My wife had requested that I leave our apartment and the judge requested I leave the state of Maryland.

And um so between the two of them, I got the message. And um and I went to where I needed to go, which was a a basement of a house in Washington DC. And uh and that's where the miracle happened for me.

And and the miracle was I drank all I could drink and I couldn't drink anymore. And May the 13th, 1973, I went into what pass for a bathroom. And uh I had one idea in mind, and that one idea was to die.

Um, and I would have thought that suicide was a big deal, but it's really not a big deal for an alcoholic. Suicide is just the next thing at all. It's just the next thing.

Um, in in 12 years before this, in July of 1961, I I was this uh 17-year-old uh 113lb kid who who uh uh left a little town in Martinsville, Ohio. Took a bus from Wheeling, West Virginia to Pittsburgh, which is about 60 mi away. It's the second longest trip I'd ever been on.

And uh once I went to Cleveland and um and I was 13 years old and I'd gone up there to join the Marine Corps. Now, I knew nothing about the Marine Corps. Uh, the only thing I knew was they occasionally took some people to a swamp in South Carolina and drowned them.

It's the only thing I I knew about the Marine Corps. And uh and I was also knew I couldn't ask. I was always someone who knew he couldn't ask.

And um and I also knew that everybody understood the big picture except me. It was sort of like one day God put everybody in a big room and he said, "I'm going to explain this once. Pay attention." and and he told everybody about how to grow up and how to be a real man and and told them all about sex and about politics, told them about God and all that stuff.

And I was in the bathroom and the feeling I had my whole life was that that everybody understood but me and so my job was to go through life and act as though I understood the big picture. And the truth was I had no earthly idea of what was going on. And uh I even joined the Marine Corps because I didn't know what I wanted to do when I graduated from high school.

And my thought was everybody knew what they wanted to do cuz you all seem so sure yourselves. So I was convinced I was the only guy who was lost. And uh and my thought was if I go away they won't know that I don't know what it is I'm supposed to be doing.

They'll think I'm doing it. So uh so I had to go away. And back then the way you went away was you either went to college and it wasn't great danger of that or to the military because all the men went in the military.

It wasn't if it was where and when. And uh and so I went up to Pittsburgh and and I joined the Marine Corps. And that night in May of 1961, my life changed.

And it it changed in a way that was to uh map the course of my life. Um I had that profound awakening that happens to alcoholics. The first time most of us get an opportunity to drink as much as we want to drink.

And I never want to forget it. Uh I uh there were three guys from Pittsburgh who had joined the same time I did. And our train was leaving that night.

It was leaving at midnight. It was about 4:00 in the afternoon. and we went over to a little bar and uh I had no idea what what we were going to do, but I just followed them over there cuz that's what I did.

I followed people around and uh and we went over and and and sat down. I like to say that I walked into this place and uh and it was filled with real men, you know, the kind that, you know, spit on the floor and have tattoos and they know all those words and uh and um and and you know, all of them had real women with them. you know, real women hang around with real men and guys like me get what's left.

And and uh and uh and I remember uh sitting at the table with these guys and the bartender came over. He was a real man. And he said, "What do you want?" And I thought, "Oh my god, a quiz." And I always thought that when you least expected it, somebody was going to say, "Take out a blank sheet of paper and put your name in the upper leftand corner." They're going to ask a lot of questions, none of which I'd studied.

You know, I studied a lot. I just never studied the right stuff. And and I did not answer a question like, "What do you want?" And so I waited and these guys ordered a beer so I did too.

And and uh and you know years later a psychologist would scratch his chin and say to me, "Why do you think you began to drink in the first place?" Now I knew that had to be an important question. So u I remember I went home and I got a fifth of scotch and I I went down by the stream all by myself and I drank that whole fifth trying to figure out why I drank in the first place. And then I went down to Jim and Max Sunny Brook Farm which was a hillbilly bar near where I lived.

And and I sitting there and I said to the guy next to me, "Tell me, why'd you drink in the first place?" He said, "Shut up." I said, "All right." I was just wondering, uh, you know, um, uh, and you know, I could never figure out why I drank. So, I got to Alcoholics Anonymous and I'll tell you why I drank in the first place. I'm 17 years old.

I weigh 113 lbs. You know, I've never been away from home. I have no earthly idea what's going on in the world.

And I'm in a bar with three other guys, all of whom order a beer. And I just didn't have the intestinal fortitude to order a sasparilla. That's why I drank in the first place.

And and of course for for an alcoholic it's not important why we drink, is it? What's important is what happens to us when we drink. And what happened to me was I had a profound spiritual weight.

That's the only way I can describe it because what it did was my reality was displaced. I after somewhere between a second and a third drink, my life changed in a way that was to dictate the rest of my life. And and that's a profound experience.

And and I I remember I stood up. I didn't want to stand up. I just stood up and and and I looked and my whole world was different.

The floor was 6' 4 in below me and and my right shoulder was out there and my left shoulder and the muscles were rippling through my body, you know, and and that that mind had been filled with fear and terror and everything just like boom, just like that. It was crystal clear. And I remember thinking, of course, it's so simple.

Why didn't I see it before? I mean, life is so simple. And I understood the big picture.

And then I looked around that place and my heart broke because that place was filled with a bunch of pathetic snipping little men, you know, and all of them had women with them with their hungry eyes looking at me. You know how they do it. And and um and it was incredible.

It was one of the most incredible experiences I ever had in my life. And I spent the rest of the evening going from table to table answering questions, you know. I mean, here I'm I'm a guy who doesn't know anything.

I was dumb as a tabletop. And a half hour later, I'm the most brilliant guy who ever lived, you know. Now, my sponsor is Tom I from Aberdine, North Carolina.

Now, Tom told me, he said, "You know, you you weren't yet alcoholic. You could have quit drinking." I said, "Tom, who on earth would have wanted to?" I mean, that's the greatest I ever felt in my life. And I mean, it was spectacular.

I was answering questions they didn't even ask, you know, and it seemed to me, it's about 11 o'clock and we had to go catch the train. And it seems to me, now this may not be entirely accurate, but this is my recollection. Okay?

It seems to me they were saying, "Please don't go. We've just discovered you." That's what it seems. And I mean, it was an amazing an amazing discovery for me.

And I never knew life could be like that. And and and uh and I went and I got on the train. I assume I got on the train.

And and I think it's reasonable to assume that cuz I woke up on the train the next morning. And and that was one of many assumptions I was to make over the next 12 years. But I woke up and and uh I was lying on a floor, the Pullman coach that the Marine Corps had provided for me.

And it's hard to believe, but someone had wet the floor I was lying on. I know it's it's hard to to believe, but they had. And uh and whoever it was had also wet me.

And um and a terrible thing had happened. I was 300 miles from home and and again, I was 17 years old and I weighed 113 lbs. And and and I again I didn't know anything.

It was just amazing. And I I changed my clothes and got off the train and the guys were waiting for me and they said, "What do you want to do?" And I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to find some of what I had had the night before that changed my life.

And uh so we went to a place called De Monaco and we began to drink. And and uh and uh got on a train. I was drunk.

I got on a train in Washington. And and back then uh when the train crossed the line in North Carolina, they closed a club car. And I was uh I was screaming my objection, my hatred for the state in North Carolina until we got to South Carolina and they opened a club car back up and and and I fell off the train in a place called Yamisey, South Carolina.

It's someone moved to Bottom Step or something. I fell across the the next set of railroad tracks and there was a very rude man, Bob, that they had sent down there to uh to talk to us, to welcome us. and and uh and he was hurling obscenities at myself and the other young men who had gone down there to die for their country.

And uh and and I kept I tried to explain to this cretton that he'd probably get a lot further with us if uh he treat us with a little respect. You know, he never seemed to be able to grasp exactly what it was I was trying to say. He's a very limited man.

And um and they say you can learn from every experience. And I'll tell you what I learned from that experience. I learned that you can do a lot of push-ups drunk.

That's what I learned from that experience, you know, and I'll tell you, I hope you never have to use this information, but you can also do push-ups and throw up at the same time, you know, and I did a lot of that. And then, you know, and they said there's something to be grateful for. I'm grateful we weren't doing sit-ups.

That's what I'm grateful for. And and I was launched into the Marine Corps, but the it had happened to me. That thing had happened, you know, it had happened.

And and and I tell you, I really love the Marine Corps. And and I often wondered why. I mean, you know, you got to be in line for the second step if you love Paris Island.

But I just loved it, you know, and I wondered why. And, you know, I'd sober a number of years and I finally figured out why I liked Paris Island. It was because I had spent the first 17 years of my life guessing at what my job description was.

I don't know if anybody can relate to this, but I spent my whole life guessing at what it was I was supposed to do and be and all that stuff, you know. in the Marine Corps had a very very clear idea what it was they wanted you to do and they weren't a bit hesitant about sharing it with you, you know. So, so I think that's why I loved it.

And you know, I just I packed on about 30 lbs and I grew a few inches and I won a dress award and outstanding man's award off of Paris Island. I got metorious promotion and I was going to spend the rest of my life in the Marine Corps. I was home, you know, next to the nuns, it was easy.

And um and uh and I really was going to spend the rest of my life there. There's one problem and it's a small problem. And the problem was I was alcoholic.

That's the problem. And what being alcoholic means to me is that I will fall in love with a way of life. You know, the most enthusiastic people in the world are members of Alcoholics Anonymous.

They really are. I mean, just enthusiastic people. And I was enthusiastic drunk, you know.

I mean, I'd find a way of life and I'd love it and I'd throw myself into it 110% and I'd go to great lengths and everything and and and then I would begin to violate every principle associated with that way of life. See, cuz first step says powerless over alcohol, my life would become unmanageable. What that means to me is that I'm a guy who if he takes a drink, he can never predict what's going to happen.

But I know that whatever happens is going to have something to do with the deterioration of my value system. You know, I began drinking in 1961. You know, in 1962, I was less the man I wanted to be than I had been in 1961.

And in 1963, I'd violated more principles associated with being a Marine and a human being than I had in 1962. And that's the horror to me of alcoholism. Every year I was less the man I wanted to be than I'd been the year before.

I violated more principles. And that's to me the first step. It says that I become everything that I swear I never want to be.

And the only defense I had was to blame the Marine Corps. And that's what I did. I I after four years I was offered a commission.

I worked hard for that. I I like I said I had a few meritorious promotions. I was offered a an appointment to go to Quanico to go to officers candidate school and I turned it down uh because I knew that the Marine Corps was making me drink funny and in 1965 we went did a little thing down in Santa Domingo and and um I was um blessed with excellent night vision and uh and they would test us for that and and I was an NCO and every other night I would lead a patrol into town and um and we'd often take fire and things and from snipers and things In the night that I wasn't leading patrol, I drink.

And one morning, I woke up and I was fully clothed and I had my 45 on. The slide or the hammer was to the rear. There was a round in the chamber and there were three rounds missing out of the magazine.

It isn't normally the way I slept. And um and someone was waking me up and they said, "The captain wants to see you so that um uh you can, you know, make a report what happened last night." And I had no earthly idea what happened last night. Well, what had happened was evidently the other man who usually led patrols every other night was sick.

And so after I had consumed a couple bottles of uh local uh fruit uh rum, um I uh got up, got dressed, led a patrol a man into a combat zone, took fire. By the grace of God, nobody was hit and went back and lay down in my bed and went to sleep. And I don't remember any of it.

Remember any of it. And it terrified me. And uh uh they wanted me to explain what happened and I I you know how we dance and I said well I said I'll tell you I it's hard for me to remember.

I mean everything happened so fast. I'm think and um and so you know I had to go around and sort of get the story from the guys get the story from the guys and uh and to make out a report and uh and I all and I knew then that uh my problem was the Marine Corps. It was an abnormal way to live and it made me drink funny.

And I got out and and uh and you know what happened? Of course, I went into a steel mill and that's an abnormal way to live and it made me drink funny. So, I left there and I went to work in a theologian like this place, you know, 13 guys studying to be priests are already priests, right?

And um and I used to go to their graveyard, too. I used to go there and drink, carry on conversations with the headstones and things like that. I mean, just crazy stuff.

And uh and and you know, and and of course, I left there just one hand. and then I got married and and you know being married will make you drink funny and um and and you know you know how it is and we had a couple children on and on and I I'll share that with you as we go along but but the point is is that I was in the throws of something that was dictating the course of my life and I had no earthly idea what was happening to me. I didn't know Alcoholics Anonymous existed.

Uh I uh I I had heard that that at one time there was an organization back in the 30s or something called Alcoholics Anonymous, but it was a religious organization and they had broken up cuz you no longer needed religion. I mean, you know, I didn't need a religion. I had an education and um and and you know, and only fools would, you know, worry about religion and all that sort of self-centered insanity that happens to us.

And uh but what I really want to remember about alcoholism was May the 13th, 1973. And I went into that bathroom to die. Okay?

I was completely powerless. My life was totally unmanageable. Everything I'd ever wanted or worked for was gone.

I was morally, physically, and financially bankrupt. I wasn't permitted to see my children. I mean, everything was gone.

I've been drinking in the zoo. Uh Mark reminded me uh that I used to drink in a zoo. I I don't think there's any zoo drinkers here, but but uh but uh if I hope nobody drinks again, but if you do, I'd like to recommend a zoo.

You know, you're going to end up there anyway. You might as well go. And uh and I used to drink in a national zoo.

And I'll tell you how I did it in case you're interested. Uh uh I used to get a Tupperware glass and I'd fill it up with whatever I had, you know, 20 oz glass and I'd put an ice cube in it so I wouldn't be an alcoholic. You know, if you use ice, you can't be an alcoholic.

And um and then I'd put the lid on it and burp it. You know how you do. And uh and I went down to the uh zoo.

And there's a lot of places to drink in the zoo. The best place is the ape house. And um and and I'd um used to I didn't bother anybody so they didn't bother me.

And I they had the old ape house. They had bleachers and you could sit on the bleachers and look at the apes and and I'd go to the very end and I'd go up to the top so that I wouldn't bother anybody. And I was across from the cage where they had an orangutang.

Now, you know, you you could, you know, pick your favorite ape. Mine was the orangutang. It seemed to have a lot more personality.

And uh and and what was really nice about it was it was excited to see me. And uh you know, and I must tell you, you know, no one had been excited to see me in a little while. And uh it would jump up and down and and things and I'd wave and and uh you know, you get you go to a place, you get to know everybody.

And uh somebody asked me if it was a male or a female. You know, it's hard to tell when an orangutang and uh it didn't matter cuz I was impotent by this time anyway. But but I used to sit there and and this orangutang was great.

I mean, he'd do all this stuff or she whoever would do all the stuff I always wanted to do. And I remember one day uh a family came in, you know, odd bunch, a man, a woman, and two children. And I mean, it's just strange looking thing.

and and they came in and this orangutang sort of looked at me and had that glint in his eye, you know, and uh and they were standing there looking and everything and it it settled down and it picked up a whole pile of droppings and pelted the whole family and I jumped right on, you know, and um um and any looked at me in disgust and walked to the edge of the cave and I began to curse it because, you know, rejection's nothing I something I've never been very good with. And uh and so the keeper threw me out. He told me, he said, "Uh, get out of here." He said, "Yeah, I don't mind you drunks hanging around here." He said, "But you know, we have families coming in here and you can't be talking like that." And I said to him, "Sir, I'll never be back." And I wasn't.

I mean, I had some pride, you know, and uh I kind of considered that the end of my uh social drinking because I then went back to to this place I was staying in in the basement of a house and and I went to where I needed to go and and and it came came down on me on May the 13th, 1973. and and I went in there to die. And and you know, I used to think suicide would be a big deal.

I really didn't understand suicide, but I understand suicide now for the alcoholic. For the alcoholic, suicides just the next thing. I'd spent 13 or 12 years trying to get back to Pittsburgh that night in Pittsburgh.

It was the greatest night of my life. And I spent the next 12 years trying to get back to Pittsburgh. And no price was too great to pay to go to Pittsburgh.

It was that simple. Um, you know, and one day, you know, I went into the NCO club and and and I said, "Give me a double scotch on a rock." So, I said, "How much would that be?" He said, "$60 in your military career." I thought, "Well, that's about right." And I gladly paid it. And one day I went in for a bottle of gin.

And and the man in the liquor store told me, he said, "That'll be $6.75 and your wife and your two daughters." I thought, "That's about right. My paid." I went to get some wine or something and uh the guy said, "Well, you know, that'll be 75 cents in your life." And it seemed right. I mean, it really seemed right.

It was just the next thing. And I had a bunch of pills in in my medicine cabinet. I worked in hospitals as did my estrange wife.

And uh then they give you all the pills you wanted, you know, but I never took them. I was always afraid of them. Some of you think that's the saddest story you ever heard, but uh but I just never took them.

And uh so I had a medicine cabinet full and I went in to take them all and something happened to me and and it took me a number of years to understand this and sometime if you're interested this weekend I'll be glad to to share it with you. But I heard a woman a woman spoke to me and I said I'm 29 years old at least will be over. And a woman spoke to me.

Now I didn't like women. Uh I married one. I gave him a chance and uh but I just didn't like them.

So, the fact that I heard a woman always mystified me and and this woman's voice told me not to kill myself. And it was just like boom. All of a sudden, my mind was crystal clear.

And I remember that my aranged wife had given me a phone number or two phone numbers. And I ran in and I pulled a drawer out and it fell on the floor and I found a phone number and I called it and and that's how I understood the first step because the woman on the other end of the phone had a British accent. Now, I don't know why, but there was something very soothing about the fact that this woman had a British accent.

Now, we went to war with these people a couple hundred years ago. So, I don't know why I trust them, but but I did. It was just something very soothing about it.

And uh it's like she knew what she was talking about, you know, cuz she had a British accent and and and she did because she knew how to talk to me. It was a treatment center and she was a recovering alcoholic and she talked to me and and she knew I was suicidal and she asked me for my phone number. She said, "I'll call you back in a minute." Well, I know now that she wanted to know how to tell the police to get a hold of me.

I was that suicidal and she knew it. And she called me back and u and she said, "How can I help you?" And I said, "If you don't help me, I think I'm going to die." Now, I didn't know I was alcoholic, but God gave me a gift. Okay?

And when I hung up that phone, I looked and there was almost a full bottle of scotch on a draining board. Now, you got to know, I know nothing about alcoholism and I know nothing about Alcoholics Anonymous, but I knew this. If I took one drink of alcohol, I would die.

But more importantly, knowing I would die would never keep me from drinking. I knew that I had an illness that I could never be frightened into being sober. And and I know that's true because I I worked in a teaching hospital and and in this hospital, you could go to uh you they they would list the autopsies, you know, and what people died of, sort of like coming attractions.

And and if you were interested in in something, you know, you could sign up and you could scrub in and uh and so when sometimes they'd have, you know, some old guy, you know, 40 41 years old, something, you know, had died of acute chronic alcoholism and I'd scrub into this post and I'd watch, oh, it's awful thing. They I'd see the liver and the brain. Oh, it's just awful.

And and I'd, you know, I'd watch as much as I could watch and I'd leave there and I go down to Clyde or Chadwicks. I go to Chadwicks and say, Vinnie, you better give me a double. You'll never guess what I just saw.

And he said, "You always get a double." I said, "Well, make it a triple." So, so he give me a triple martini and I'd be and the guy rest of the guys at the bar say, "What did you see?" And I'd explain to them what I just saw the brain and the liver and all that stuff, you know, and they say, "My god, you better give us a triple, too, Vinnie." And and then we'd sit there and I sit there till midnight drinking and we'd discuss, "How can someone do this to themselves?" And we we we concluded that there's some people just don't like themselves, just don't have any respect for themselves. And uh and so I knew that I could never be frightened into not drinking. So I and that's important information and that's to me is is a critical part part of the first step.

Yeah. I knew that that uh that I would drink again. Okay.

And and I'll tell you how I envision the first step. This is just this is how I could I had to make pictures in my head. And this is a picture I made.

May the 13th, 1973. I had my last drink up until today by the grace of God. Okay.

Um, now that's a very important date, you know. I mean, 1973, May 13th, 1970. It's a big date in our house.

You know, my lovely wife crossstitches, okay? And that date is cross stitch on everything. I mean, you know, if you sat in my house, she'd cross stitch it on you.

I mean, that is a big day in our house. And yet, that's not the drink that's important. The drink that's important.

And I want you to hear this. The drink that's important is the drink I must take. See, being alcoholic means I must drink again unless there's a miracle.

And you're it. You're it. And and I tell you how I see it.

In the beginning, that drink was about 5 minutes ahead of me. Remember that? There were times, there were days I could smell it.

You know, I go, "There's scotch around here somewhere." I'd be walking down the street. Who's drinking martinis? I mean, I just, you know, I could I mean, it was it was that close to me.

It was so close. I could smell it. And then gradually going to meetings, talking to people, going to coffee, things like that, I began to push the drink further and further ahead of me.

And then pretty soon it was a day ahead of me, you know, and then and then maybe a week and then maybe a month, you know, in a couple years. You'd be out there like 3 months, you know, then I'd say, I think I'll seek some balance. When an alcoholic begins to seek balance, what they're doing is looking for a good way to cut back on meetings.

Okay? And seeking balance for an alcoholic usually means seeking sex. Just just for thought, you know, and and and so I begin to seek balance.

Now, now what happened to me in those times is I, you know, I'd stop doing a lot of things I was doing and I'd begin to gain on that drink. I begin to catch up to that drink. Now, if I ever catch up to that drink, I'll drink it because, you see, I'm powerless over alcohol.

And I've been around other people's drinks. I mean, I was on a plane today and there were people there, you know, that I'm not interested in their drinks, but there's a drink out there that's my drink and if I catch up to it, I'll drink it. And the reason I'll drink it is cuz I'm powerless over alcohol.

Okay? And it's there. Now, I do a lot of 12step work.

I go to hospitals and jails and all sorts of things on 12step calls. And I can't tell you, hundreds of people have said to me in a hospital, I don't know what happened. I said, I know what happened.

What happened was you caught up to the drink with your name in it on it, you know, and then and if you catch up to it, you'll drink it. By the grace of God, I've never had to catch up to it. I've been close.

I've been awfully close, you know. I go in those phases where I become an expert, you know, and I go to meetings late and then I begin to criticize people. All right, I know what she's going to say.

She always says the same thing. That's all she ever says. Wish she'd read a different book.

Maybe she'd get a different, you know, and on and on and on. And what that means is I'm I'm catching up to my drink. And so that's to me what the first step is all about.

It's being powerless over alcohol and having and and that my life is unmanageable. Okay? And that's critical critical to me to know that is it's absolutely critical.

And you know the discovery I made back then is true today. If I take one drink of alcohol, I'll die. And knowing I'll die will never keep me from taking it.

That's why I'm an active member of Alcoholics Snugs. That's why I have a sponsor that I talk to. And I don't just have a sponsor.

I mean, I have a sponsor I talk to. And we sit down and I bring him. He says, "Let's get current." And I sit down and we get current.

And he asks me just really pushy, obnoxious, personal questions. Things like, "What were your motives?" And I'll say, "They were mine." And and and and then I and I sponsor guys. I sponsor a lot of guys.

I'm a lucky man to sponsor the men I sponsor. And I sponsor a lot. I mean, I sponsor him in prison and I sponsor him by letter and I sponsor him all sorts of ways, okay?

Because if I take a drink, I'll die. And knowing I'll die will never keep me from taking a drink. The only thing that'll keep me from taking a drink was something that happened in 1935.

A miracle happened in 1935 and I have the option of getting involved in that miracle. It's not my miracle. It's our miracle.

and I can get in if I want. And that's the only thing I know that will keep me from drinking. The only thing I know.

Now, other people may have some other plans. I don't have that plan because I'm a real alcoholic and that means I'm powerless over alcohol. Okay?

And and if you're thinking that that means that if you take a drink, you can't predict your behavior. That's true. But it also means that left to my own devices, I must drink again.

And that's a critical piece of information. That's a piece of information that I tended to forget the first few years I was sober. You know, the first few years I was sober, I was cursed with success.

I don't know if anybody's had this experience, but I hit the road running and I loved Alcoholics Anonymous from the very beginning. And from the very early on and early on, very early on, uh, I discovered something. Okay, I discovered that something outside of me could help me.

The second step says power greater ourselves to restore us to sanity. We came to believe that it's a process and and let me if if I may let me take just a minute and explain that and then we'll take a break. Okay.

Um my second daughter was born. Her name's uh Kimberly. And u uh Kelly was our my first daughter.

And Kelly had a good sense to be born uh at about 2:00 in the afternoon. So I was sober. Um Kimberly on the other hand uh uh decided not only to come at night but to come about 3 months early.

And um and I was doing what you know I think you ought to be able to do in your house. I was watching the test pattern on a TV. And um some of you young people don't know what a test pattern is, but uh it used to be that uh that when you you know you drank all the channels would go off the television, all three of them.

And you know, you'd hear the national anthem and if you could stand up, you'd stand up because after all, I am a former Marine. And um and then then they put then they have these jets fly over and I'd cry cuz I always cried at when they played the national anthem. And when they had, you know, supermarket openings and most everything else, but and then I would proceed to watch the test pattern.

Now, you know, it sounds boring, but you know, you can vary it. You can lay down and watch it. uh you could stand up and watch it, you you know you and uh and I'm watching the test pattern in the floor and uh I was in my underwear and it's a very private thing to be watching the test pattern and and my wife decided it was time to have the baby and um and she couldn't waken me and uh I I was tired.

I worked hard and so she had thrown water on me which meant I was wet and um and then because she panicked and she hated me. She invited the neighbors over and when I opened my eyes the neighbors were standing there watching me watch the test pattern in my underwear and uh and uh I was wet and I quickly explained to them that she must have thrown something on me because I'm not the kind of guy who would wet himself watching a test pattern and and they didn't seem to care. But uh but you know, I got up and somehow I got dressed and I got my wife in a car and I sped across town and uh and I went to the hospital where I worked and and uh and it must have been mortifying for my wife because I demanded that they take care of her, which was a joke because I was the least considered person in the world, but I demanded that she was my wife and they take care of her.

And uh and the baby was born and she weighed about a pound and 3/4 or something like that. And uh when I got home, I just got home and I just fell into bed and the phone rang and my wife was crying and she said she said, "The baby has high membrane disease and they don't think she's going to live and would you come back?" And I remember I was just enraged, you know. I I don't know how else to explain.

I was just angry. And I and I dressed I showered and I dressed and I I went back to the hospital and and it began a an odyssey that u just amazing to me. Um there a very critical time uh with these kids and and 3 days before she was born the hospital I worked at Georgetown University had had ordered and received uh a experimental machine very common now called a negative respirator but this is the first one they had and it was put together the day she before she was born and the day she was born uh the chief resident uh had gone to high school with me back in Ohio and uh Mary Kate said to me, "Keith, we'd like to put your daughter on a respirator." We said, "We" She said, "We don't think she'll live.

I'm sorry, but uh and if she does live, we think she'll be but we would like to try." And the reason they wanted me to agree to it was I knew I worked and I wouldn't sue them, you know. And uh so I told them to do whatever they thought they could do. And and then and I never want to forget this because the next few days um I discovered what had happened to me.

Uh, and I discovered our friend Bob Brown used to say, "I'm not the man I used to be, and I never was." And um, and I sat in an office. We had an office that we used that was across from the neonatal nursery. And I sat there at night and I kept the door slightly a jar and the lights off so no one would know I was there.

And I just watched this little thing fight for every light breath. And and these little little infants when they breathe, they retract and they actually lift off the mattress. And she was fighting for every breath of life.

And every I knew what my father would have done. My father was fathering 11 children and and he knew how to be a father and he knew how to be a husband and I knew what he'd do. He'd be in there and he'd have his arm around his wife and he and and he would be telling her we can do this together and and all that and and I couldn't do that.

And I remember the night that that my wife she'd walk up and down the hall like she had a thousand yard stare and her husband was 10 yards away and wouldn't open the door and go out and take her in his arms because it was just I couldn't I don't know how to explain it. I just couldn't. and there was just nothing there anymore.

And I remember the night at 72 hours when it's very very critical and she went in and baptized our baby because they didn't believe she'd live through the night. And I ran down to the chapel. They had a chapel and I hadn't been in it and I hadn't been to church in quite a while.

And alcoholism is a spiritual illness and it certainly killed any spiritual life I had. And and and I went down there and I was desperate and I went into this little chapel and I grew up in a Catholic church and the tabernacle was a special place to us. And and even when I was a little kid, I go playing ball.

I'd run through the church and and and I'd say, "Hi, Jesus. I'm going to go play ball. You can come if you want." And and uh even as a little kid, I just love the tabernacle.

I never went by the church that I didn't go in and visit. And and I went in that night and I got on my knees in front of the tabernac tabernacle and I begged God to let my little girl live. And I said, "If you'll let her live, I'll do anything.

If you'll let her live, I'll stop drinking." And I was drunk in 12 hours. I drank when I thought drinking would kill my baby. Am I powerless over alcohol?

My goodness. Yes. You know, there's a um great philosopher named Blaz Blaze Pasquel, Frenchman.

Um and he said God created man in his own image. And unfortunately, man returned a favor. And uh and I had created a god that would kill a little kid because her dad was sick.

And that's how spiritually ill I was. And uh and um and then I walk into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and a perfect stranger standing at the door. Perfect strange.

I never saw this guy before in my life. And he had that smile on his face. You know, he said to me, "You're new, aren't you?" And I thought, "Oh my god, he's psychic." I mean, how's he know?

And uh and and then he he shook my hand. You know, the way they do alcoholics with both hands. And then he looked me in the eye, which I always thought was kind of pushy, you know, kind of obnoxious, but he looked me in the eye.

one of those guys and and he said to me, "You know, son," he said, "If you keep coming here, you never have to drink again." And I wanted to scream at him, you don't know me. I'm a guy who drinks when he thinks drinking will kill his little girl. But he did know me because he was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And he knew that a power greater than me could restore me to sanity. He knew that you could do for me, you perfect strangers, could do for me what I could not do on my knees in front of the tabernacle, the safest place I'd ever been in my life. And of course, God would work it out that way.

If I could go in there and get what I needed, why would I need you? And if I didn't need you, I'd miss the best part of what God has in store for me. And uh you know, and Kimberly didn't die.

She um uh she lived and and uh and she is uh wasn't She uh she graduated with honors from Auburn University. Now, I always tell her, I think you can be and graduate with honors from Auburn University, but Just kidding. And uh and she uh a year ago Christmas presented me with my first granddaughter, Haley Noel.

And uh she's a wonderful, wonderful child. And she's been a wonderful child her whole life and she's very she's gotten well and she's just wonderful. She's a school teacher and married to a dentist and they they live in Daphne, Alabama.

And just wonderful kid. She's been wonderful all her life. And uh and and and I'm glad God didn't kill her cuz her dad was sick.

And that's the second step. You know, I was sober 5 weeks and I walked into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And the man walked up to me and he said, uh, said, "My name's Dick.

What's your name?" And I said, "It's Keith." He said, "Is this the first time at this meeting?" And I said, "Yes, sir." And he said, "Well, I'd like to get you a cup." He said, "I I'd like to buy you a cup of coffee." And we went over and he said, he said, "Uh, tell me, do you have a job?" I said, "Well, I think I do." I said, "I used to work at the university. I don't know if I still have it or not." And, uh, I said, "I'll find out tomorrow." And he said, "Well, that's good." And he said, "Are you married?" And I said, "Well, no." I said, "Chew me out." And um and uh he said, "Well, you have any children?" I said, "I have two little girls, so I'm not allowed to see them." And he said, "Oh, what are their names?" And I said, "Well, Kelly and Kimberly." And he said, "You know," he said, "I've never seen a father get sober and not see his children." And that's nice. I mean, you know, you're supposed to say nice things.

I mean, you have a room full of phonies and they say nice stuff, you know, and and uh and so I I came back the next week and I walked in the door and this man, I remembered him, but I didn't know his name. He came over and he said, "Remember me? My name's Dick." And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "Uh, Keith, how's it going?" I said, "Well, fine." He said, "You stay sober all week." I said, "Yes, I did." He said, "That's wonderful." He said, "So did I." And he said, "Uh, are you still have your job at Georgetown?" I said, "Yeah, yeah." He said, "That's great." And then he said, "House, Kelly, and Kimberly." He remembered the names of my children.

So, you got to come to believe that something greater than you can restore you to sanity. To someone who was so fiercely isolated and so desperately alone that when I was living with my wife, there were nights I'd lay there knowing that she couldn't be my wife because I couldn't be that close to anybody. I felt like a perfect stranger laying next to a woman I was married to.

And in the nights I go down the hall and the kids would be asleep and I go in and I'd touch their little heads and I knew they couldn't be mine cuz nothing that night could have come from me. And then there's a man who remembers the names of my kids. There really is a power greater than ourselves that can restore sanity.

There's something that happens in Alcoholics Anonymous that's more powerful than anything in any place I've ever been. I love my church. I go all the time.

I snuck into mass. I was one of the people that were angry at at the kitchen for being late for dinner. I snuck into mass and uh this evening and I go as often as I can.

I love it, you know, and I of course experience power there. But God has built me. So here's where I experience a special kind of power.

This is the kind of power that gives me what I need to go and do what it is I need to do. This is the power that restores me to sanity. I can isolate in church.

I I stayed in a monastery. I've done a lot of things. sober and I can isolate every place in the world except in a meeting of alcoholics anonymous.

I cannot isolate in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous because here I have something of value. Here I have something that's special and unique. I've been given a gift that only I can deliver to another alcoholic in that sobriety.

And the greatest minds in the world can't carry to a sick alcoholic what you and I can carry. And that's the power of the second step. That's coming to believe that a power greater ourselves can restore us to sanity.

Bill describes it beautifully in a 12 and 12 describes it beautifully and he talks about what state stands in the way of that and how we come in hostile and all the rest of it. And the bottom line is none of that matters. You my hostility or my fear or my anger or anything else is puny compared to the love that you have for me.

Not because I'm who I am but because I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. You must love me. You must care for me.

Your very life depends upon it. People love me who don't even like me. They do.

They must. They have no choice. Absolutely no choice.

And that's the power of the second step. It's something that transcends any. I don't understand it.

It It's the most amazing thing to me. I The second step and the sixth step and the seventh step have always astounded me. The power in those steps is unbelievable.

and and I have to draw pictures and one of the pictures I have of the second step is a tree and and I first came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm standing on a limb and I'm grasping the trunk of the tree for all it's worth. And you said to me, "Look, move out a little bit.

Move out a little bit." And so I'd begin to move out on a limb and I get further and further out on a limb. It's called getting free. And and I'd be out there for a little while and all of a sudden I'd realize I'm way out here on my own and I shouldn't be here and I and on and on and you'd say, "Wait a minute." You know, God has a perfect plan for you.

He's got a name. He's got a plan with your name on it. It's Keith's plan.

Can you imagine God putting together Keith's plan? I mean, it's an astounding thing to me when I think about it. He has a perfect plan for me.

Now, he does he doesn't rely on me. I rely on him. But if I suit up and show up, he'll use me.

I I'll give you an example and then we can take a break. Um I was speaking once out in Oregon. And it's been some years ago, pretty long time ago because um in Washington State, I'm sorry.

And because, you know, I was I was going to be leaving and and I spoke and and there a couple thousand people there, I guess, and people were kind enough to come up and thank me and and one man came up and I don't know why I said this. I said, "Could I have your phone number?" And he looked at me and and he wrote his name and phone number down and I I don't know why I said I just did, you know, and I put it in my pocket and I had to catch a flight right after that to get back. And and so I there I was going through Chicago and I supposed to go from Chicago into Raleigh and I was living in Fateville at the time and then down to Fagville and um and I loved coming home because Julie was in my fiance and she would come over and build a fire and I had a little house out on the golf course and she'd build a fire and I'd come home and we'd have hot tea or hot chocolate or something and I'd tell her about the trip and about the conference and the people that I met and all that and and and it was wonderful.

you know, I was madly in love with this woman and I wanted to see her and and uh so I get to Chicago and they said, you know, Raleigh is going to be snowed in so we're going to take you through Atlanta and and so they fly me to Atlanta and the problem was they couldn't get me from Atlanta home. So I'm stuck there and it's the Democratic National Committees in Atlanta. Okay, remember that's how long ago it was.

And and so they said, "Well, we'll give you a certificate for a a hotel room." And I'm thinking, I don't want a hotel room in Atlanta. I want to go home to and so I went outside and I said, "God's got to have a plan here. I'm going to look for it.

There must maybe it's somebody I can help." I'm looking around see I can help and nobody gives a damn in Atlanta if you help him or not. And and um so finally I get to this hotel and and I said to the guy, "The airlines gave me this certificate said you would honor it for a room." The guy said, "You got to be crazy." He said, "I got one room." He said, "I'm not only going to give you that room, not going to give you that room for nothing. I'm going to charge you twice as much as it's worth." He I mean he was right up front.

You got to give him credit. Probably a member of Allen. He just laid it right out there.

Sorry, Sean. And uh um and and so I'm I'm mad, you know, I'm grumbling and I thought, I'll take the room and and and I went upstairs. I really mad and and I called Julian and said, you know, I won't be in and and this and that and everything.

I'm whining, you know, grumbling and and I got ready to go to bed and I took the stuff out of my pocket and I saw that card with that man's name on it and I said, "I better call him." And I called him and he answered the phone and I said, "Yeah." I met you today. I'm Keith, remember? And he said, "You're the man who spoke." And I said, "Yeah." And he started to cry.

I said, "What's the matter?" He said, "I got a gun. I'm going to kill myself." And and I talked to him and and I called the guy who had hosted me and the guy lived a block away and I called I said, "I'm going to call him back and talk to him. Get over there." And he got over there and they got him help and they got him in the hospital.

He's depressed and got him in the hospital and uh he's okay. And I thought about it. I was sitting in this overpriced room and I was overwhelmed by the grace of God that he would use me.

You know, someone who hated himself the better part of his life and God could use me. And every time something and you know, if I had my way, I'd have gone home and had hot chocolate with my fiance and told her all about the wonderful people I met. And maybe a day or two later, I'd have called and maybe the line would have been disconnected.

You know, God has a perfect plan. It amazes me that he includes me. And that's what the second step tells me.

The second step tells me that he loves me so much that he'll include me in his plan. And he, a matter of fact, he'll even make me kind of important in my own little piece of it, you know, and if I stay sober, I get to go through that. That's what the second is exactly where I supposed to be.

It's an amazing way to live if you're kind of new. God is an amazing way to live. And don't leave before you begin to feel and experience some of this stuff.

Why don't we take a break? Okay. A group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God.

So they picked one scientist to go and tell him that they were done with him. The scientists walked up to God and said, "God, we've decided that we no longer need you. We're to the point where we can clone people and do many miraculous things.

So why don't you just go on and get lost?" God listened very patiently and kind and and uh kindly said to the man, "Very well. Um, how about this? Let's say we have a man-making contest." To which the scientist replied, "Okay, great." But God added, "Now, we're going to do it just like I did back in the old days with Adam." The scientist said, "Sure, no problem." And he bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.

God looked at me and said, "No, no, no. Um, you have to get your own dirt. you know, um I uh told you that I took my first drink in in Pittsburgh.

That's not entirely true. Like most of my story, um I had my first drink when I I was at home. I I was 5 years old.

Um when I was five, I didn't go out a lot. So, uh and my brother uh was four. Now, I'm the uh second child, the eldest son in a family of 11 children.

Okay. I'm Irish. I won't tell you what church we went to.

I'll let you guess. But has something to do with bingo. Okay.

Um and and I guess my mom was uh my mom was out and dad was watching us. She was either at the bingo or having a baby or something. And uh and um and I think dad thought it'd be sort of funny.

So So he decided that uh we're gonna have a drink. And we rarely had alcohol around the house. Both of my parents had parents who, you know, if you wanted to go way out on a limb, you might diagnose as real alcoholics.

And um and so there was they were very very fearful about alcohol and so we rarely had it around the house. But but dad had some beer in the refrigerator and and I'll never forget this. He got a beer for me and he got one for my brother Dumb Denny.

Denny's a year younger than I am. And um and I drank mine and nothing happened. I mean I was just fine, you know.

Uh Denny on the other hand was having a spiritual awakening and u and he was he rolled around under the table and he was singing Mary had a little lamb and other drinking songs and and dad kind of panicked and rustled him to the ground and got his clothes off and put his jammies on him and took him up and put him in bed and and and dad was a little bit worried and he said don't tell your mother about this and he said I'll take you to the movies on Saturday. Well, you know when you're five they don't negotiate much with you. So I was willing to go along but uh then he wasn't here and he was just having the best time.

He's laughing and carrying on and singing and everything. And I never forget this. He stood up in his little crib and he urinated on the floor.

Yeah. And I remember thinking, you know, there's a kid who's powerless over alcohol and whose life has become unmanageable. And and I like to tell that because uh you know, not everybody makes it, you know, not everybody makes it.

And Danny, you know, had a great start and he just never developed. It was the saddest thing. you know, he went on and he did some strange things.

I'll give you some examples. Then he went to one university. He had one major.

He graduated in four years. He went to one graduate school, right? Graduated taught in his class.

He had he's offered like eight jobs. He took one. And two years ago, he he uh retired as a vice president in a large international corporation.

And the strangest thing of all is he married one woman. Now here's a guy who had the world on the palm of his hands when he was four years old and he just let it slip through his fingers, you know, and I had to work at this thing. Um, you know, I was 17 years old before I urinated on the floor for the first time.

You know, um, uh, alcohol the second step is is sort of the trap in Alcoholics Anonymous. And uh I love uh my former sponsor Sandy B who now lives down in Florida puts it very very well. He explained to me that Alcoholics Anonymous it really misrepresents itself.

Okay. And he said you're going to discover that these people trick you. And I said all right.

He said for example he said the second step they say the hoop is so big anybody can jump through. You believe whatever you want to believe. There's room for everybody.

He said you get the 11th step. It says God will period. You go, "Wait a minute." You know, I thought the deal was I could believe whatever I wanted to.

Sorry, it's too late. You know, you're enjoying life. You're, you know, you're happy and and on and on.

It's too late. You know, we've ruined it for you. And and that's what the second step is.

The second step is the thing that invites me in to this way of life. And uh, you know, I've come to realize that I'm hopeless. My life, I'm absolutely hopeless.

That's what the first step tells me. The second step delivers even bad news. And it says, I can't do it by myself.

And so the third step invites me to make the decision to turn my will in life over to the care of God. Now now this is a very interesting step because u um this thing was difficult for me and and of course it has to do with a lot of old ideas I had and and I was not a guy I I was really fortunate in Alcoholics Anonymous. My first sponsor Dan is a wonderful man and he taught me how to be a good member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

He took me on 12step calls. He took me to prisons, to Howard Pavilion for the Crimly Insane, to the VA hospital. He really showed me, he took me on 12step calls.

He showed me what alcoholics do to carry the message. What we didn't do was a lot of step work. Now, my home group was a step group, and I thought what you did was you talked about the steps.

That's what I thought you I thought you talked about the steps. So, we talked about the steps. Now, I wasn't big writer.

I didn't do all that stuff, but we talked about the steps. and and that combined with the fact that I was becoming very brilliant, very successful, uh, and really climbing the ladder, you know, told me that I didn't have to mess around much with these steps. And, uh, and I'm sober about three and a half years and just absolutely insane.

And and and my sponsor uh, had uh, left town and and um, and so for the past year, I'd been sponsoring myself, which meant I had an idiot for a sponsor. And um and uh so I was desperate and I kept watching this man Sandy and everybody said nice things about him and uh but what really attracted me to Sandy was the fact that he really enjoyed life. I mean he'd been through a divorce and he had lost everything.

He's happy as he could be and everything was a joke. Everything was fun. Everything's part of God's plan.

And that intrigued me. And and he talked a lot about the steps and I knew that I needed to do something. And and I've never been precocious.

I mean, I I just am not a quick study. I'm just not. I I get good grades, but I'm not a quick study.

And uh and so I went to Sandy and I said, "Sandy, I'd like to talk to you about sponsorship." He said, "That's great." He said, "Get your running shoes and come over to my apartment tomorrow morning." A Saturday morning. And I said, and I'm saying to myself, I don't happen to have any running shoes. And I got a few cartons of cigarettes, but I don't have any running shoes.

But but I couldn't tell him that. So I went and bought a pair of running shoes, and I rubbed them in the dirt so they look old. And uh just just incredible amount of honesty.

My whole life has just sort of just sort of come natural to me. And um and so I went over and we put on our running shoes and we proceed to run. And we're running along.

And uh you know, I smoking four packs of cigarettes a day. So, I got to the point in a hurry and and and I I said to him, I said, "Would you consider sponsoring me or we're running along?" And he said, "You're having a difficult time, aren't you?" I said, "I'm having a really difficult time." And he said, "Well, tell me." He said, "Do you believe in God?" That's an interesting question to ask the guy, you know, and and I mean, I lied 80% believed, you know, when I got my way 90%. You know, but I wasn't sure.

I had doubt. And and I thought, now nobody told me this, but I thought doubt meant you didn't have any faith. I now know that doubt's an element of faith.

That to doubt the existence of God is an element of faith, you know, and that uh you know, if if you don't doubt, you don't need faith, do you? Cuz in certainty, but I didn't understand that. And I thought about it and I knew I instinctively knew that he was asking me a question was critically important to my life.

And I wanted to be absolutely honest. And I said to him, "I don't think I do." And he looked at me as very sad and he says, "That's too bad. That means you're probably going to die." And I stopped running and he kept running.

And I thought for a minute and I caught up with him and I said, "You know, I'm willing to go home and reconsider my position." And he said, "You know, if you'll reconsider your position, you can live." And that's the third step. The third step is being willing to reconsider my position when it comes to God. Uh, and you know, a lot of unlearning had to happen for me.

I mean, I had come to blame God for what had happened to my life. I'd ask them, don't let them arrest me. They'd arrest me anyway, you know.

And I mean, I had tried a lot of stuff with God. And and you know, so I had a lot of doubts there and I had to do a lot of unlearning. I had a lot of old ideas about God and um and I you know it I always get a kick out of people who describe themselves as recovering Catholics or recovering Baptists or this or that.

I mean the truth of the matter is is that I never gave that stuff a chance. I never gave it a chance. You know when I went to do my eightstep work with my brothers and sisters and things I mean they had an entirely different view of God.

Entirely different view of nuns. I remember I went to make my amends to dumb Denny and somehow the nuns came up and I was you know I had my spiel already. I said, "Yeah, yeah." I said, "They used to beat my knuckles with a ruler and they used to use a centimeter side on me.

You know, it had to be worse for me than everybody else." And u and then he said, "You know, I seem to remember that happening a couple times." He said, "But most of all," he said, "I remember a bunch of dedicated women who gave their whole lives to teach little kids." I said, "Well, that's one way to look at it, you know." And you know, and it just seemed to me that I never looked at it that way, you know. I always looked at it. And the book says that my problem is I'm selfish and I'm self-centered.

And that was my view of life. And the third step says that I must reconsider my view of life. That my problem is that my ideas are old.

You know, I after I was sober, I was get lucky enough to be granted a scholarship and and where I worked. And so I worked full-time. I went to school full-time and I went to 10 AA meetings a week.

And every once in a while, I slept. And uh and I loved it. I was just sort of crazy.

And I studied I went back and I took a degree in philosophy and theology. Now, it sounds boring, but it really I was very excited. I could study anything I wanted to and that's what I wanted to study.

And my sponsor told me being sober meant you did what you you wanted to do that uh that you didn't have to worry about about what was practical. You do what your heart told you to do. And that's what my heart told me to do.

And I went back and studied it. And and one of the philosophers I studied was a guy named Hegel. And Hegel talked about something called the dialectical.

And I like to think of that in terms of the third step. What the dialectical says in essence is that I have an idea or a thesis and it's an old idea. Okay, for example, an old idea might be I can do it alone.

That's an old idea I had. Um, you know, and it's funny. I used to say to people, the Marine Corps taught me to rely on myself and do it alone.

The Marine Corps never taught that. I learned that in the bar in Malta, you know, the Marine Corps taught me to be part of a team and to a fire squad and on and on and on and on. me it never taught me to do it on my own.

That was my interpretation of what Smemedley Butler said or the Marine Corps said. Okay, that was that was never the Marine Corps's interpretation. And and and so you got this old idea.

You got to do it alone, right? And that's the thesis. That's the old idea.

Along comes this new idea. It's entirely opposite the old idea. You know, I need people.

Oh, you know, it's a revolutionary thing. And there's always violence. Hegel says that when an old idea and a new idea collide, when the thesis and the antithesis collide, there's always violence.

And there is. I go, "NO, THAT'S NOT RIGHT." YOU KNOW, I sit in that chair, I go, you know, and growl and all this stuff and I say the Lord's prayer and I got to hold hands with those weirdos and everything was conflict with me. Okay?

Everything was conflict. Now, you know, I was afraid of a roommate of mine said to me one time, he said, you know, he said, "They're brainwashing you." And I remember thinking, "Thank God, if anybody's brain needs washing, it's mine." I knew that much. Okay.

But but I didn't want, you know, I knew, you weren't going to tell me how to live my life. I mean, what kind of guy would I be then? I mean, I'd spent all my life telling you nobody's going to tell me how to live my life.

I mean, I did it my way. I did it on Skidro, but by damn, I did it my way. And and and and so now you're going to, you know, so there's got to be all this conflict going on.

And it was conflict. And and so I was afraid that you would change me. Isn't that crazy?

And and and then I finally Hegel said, "Well, you can't change somebody, you know, and so if you're kind of new here, don't worry. You know, you'll hear these concepts and this and that, but nobody wants to change you." What'll happen is you'll have your old idea, a new idea will come along, it'll cause violence, you'll disagree with it and everything. And then what comes out of that isn't the old idea or the new idea.

It's a combination of them banging into one another. It's called a synthesis. Yeah.

And that's why we keep coming back. And we keep hearing the same thing. But every time we hear it, it's different because we're different people every time we hear it.

And pretty soon those dumb sayings that they hang on walls become keys to whole processes of thought. You know, think, think, think. You know, what a wonderful thing.

I I when when I see that or hear that, a million things run through my mind. things I've learned in the last 26 and a half years about thinking through a drink, about, you know, thinking before I open my mouth, uh, acting not reacting. All the things I've been taught are all tied together in that little thing think thing.

And each one of those things I learned was always a revolutionary new idea. It was always uh an antithesis. And and so what happens is I get changed.

Uh, you don't change me. You present me with a new idea and I get changed. And it's an incredible and amazing phenomenon.

So I I never become a drone. I never become all the things I thought I'd become if I joined anything. I never joined anything.

I I remember even when I was in the service, a a lieutenant said to me, he said, "Lois, you did a wonderful job." And I said, "Well, I just like working for you, Lieutenant." He said, "Don't kid you or me." He said, "You don't work for anybody." He said, "You do twice as much as you have to just so you don't have to work for anybody." It was true. It was true. Okay.

I was that isolated. But Alcoholics Anonymous works great for a guy like me because the book says you don't have to believe anything. All you have to do is show up.

You have to show up. And I am asked to decide what it is I believe. It's an interesting thing, isn't it?

You decide what it is you believe because what we believe is different. And you're going to hear what we believe. And since it's different, usually the opposite of what you believe, you're going to be changed.

So you believe what you want to believe. You bet your ass I'm going to believe what I want to believe. Okay, you believe that so that we can change you.

Now, if you don't believe what you believe, we can't change you. So, it's critical for you to have an opinion. It's crazy, but it works.

It really works. And a lot of that has to do with the third step. The third step really is where I make a decision to turn my will in life over to the care of God.

Okay? And and what that means is that I'm going to determine what it is I believe. You know, I had never defined my life and my will.

I had never done it. My will in my life belong to alcohol. It told me when to drink.

It told me what to think. It told me what to do. It told me how to act.

You know, I I drank in in the some of the finest places in the world. And I drank in bootleg joints on 14th Street. And I could make myself fit wherever it was cuz I'd figure out what it is I supposed to say.

What is I supposed to do? And I quit. You tell me the alcoholic.

Could you say you come to alcoholic arms? You got to take a stand. You got to say, so I'll say something like I don't believe in God.

They said that's great. If you don't believe in God and you really hang on to that, you can believe in God. You have to because we'll confront you with reality and one day you'll believe in God.

You'll get to the point where you'll think you invented the concept. And and it's all because we begin by deciding we're not going to believe in God. I'll do it my way.

Great. We love people who do it their way. Because if you decide to do it your way, when we present you with our ideas which are different than your ideas, you end up changing.

Huh? Yeah. Now you got it.

That's right. Just an amazing process. It really is, you know.

And and the third step is a wonderful wonderful step. And and uh and and it's a process, you know, but it's also an event. I was out in California not long ago and I I guess it's been a couple years now, you know, when you ran long enough not long ago can any be five six years ago.

Um but but there was a a girl there and she was carrying on about something and sort of whining about and she was really kind of desperate. I said come on. So we took her book and we went in and I said get on your knees.

She said I said get on your knees and I gave her the book. I said read it. She said I've been in AA for 10 years.

I said I know. Now we're going to take the third step. You know, she had thought she had taken it, but I confronted her with some new reality and she took it.

And of course, she had taken it. It was time to do it again. You know, she had gone that far out and now it was time to reconfirm.

And what we reconfirm is that God loves us and that there's a special plan with my name on it and that God watches every breath I take and every step I take and he counted every hair on my head and he he carved me in the palm of his hand and and he knit me in my mother's womb and all those things I've learned as a result of being a member of Alcoholics and and what the third step says to me is yeah that's right that's what I believe. Sure it is. And the third step defines for me what I believe so that I can be changed.

and say, "I believe this. I'll go to the grave with this." Good. Tomorrow, you'll believe something different.

If you will define this, tomorrow you'll believe something different. And that's the magnificence of this whole deal. You know, that's a great thing about being wrong.

You know, it's a great gift. If you're kind of new, I've given it Let me warn you, okay? I I hate to do this, but but it's only fair.

Maggie's here. There's some old-timers here, okay? And I'm going to caution you about old-timers, okay?

Come come to the meditation, do that stuff. But for God's sake, stay away from old-timers, okay? They are not nice people.

They aren't, you know, and I'll tell you this. Uh, take this from me, okay? Tell you some stuff, okay?

They say things like they need to go to meetings. They don't need to go to meetings. The only reason they go to meetings is the only enjoyment they get out of life is watching you and me suffer.

Ain't that true? If you don't believe me, after the meeting, go over and tell Maggie a problem. The first thing she'll do is laugh.

You know, that's what old-timers do. They laugh when you tell them a problem. And if you really want to make their day, tell them a problem about sex.

They love problems about sex. You know, it's always the same thing, right? No sex, right?

They're not having sex anymore. And they don't want us to have sex either. That's what Well, I used to go to this old-timer, you know, and I I hung with a group of guys who was sort of the problem of the month group, you know.

We had it all figured out that there was a problem someplace and and we misunderstood Alcoholics Anonymous, how it worked. We thought that Alcoholics Anonymous was a process of figuring out problems, you know, and you had to figure and if you didn't figure out the problem, a big hand came down, made you drink and and so once you recognized the problem, the clock was running and you had to get an answer. And so we used to go to this old-timer and he loved picking on me, you know, and like I said, when I came to AA, I was I was I was infinite.

And I mean, I sat on that one for a little while, not literally, but but u and you know, I didn't tell anybody about Yeah. So finally, I didn't want to tell my sponsor cuz I mean, would you want to sponsor a guy who's impotent? Think about it.

So, um, I needed to be perfect for my sponsor. So, I went to this old-timer and I said to him, he said, "I'm beating around the bush." And finally, he said, "What's the problem?" I said, "All right, I'm impotent." He go, he said, "A lot of us had that trouble." He said, "It'll go away." I said, "When?" I thought it was important. You know, he said, "Well, you got a full social calendar, you know." So, I went through him one time with this problem.

I can't remember the problem. It was, you might have remember it was July of 1973. Terrible problem.

July 1973. I can't remember what it was, but it was a very serious problem. And it had to be seriously.

I went to this old-timer and he all he did was abuse me. And I went to him and I said, "I got this problem, all this stuff." And he said, "Keith, I'll tell you what I want you to do." I said, "Anything. I'm honest, willing, and open-minded." He said, "Yeah, I know." He said, "So, I want you to go home." And he said, "I want you to borrow lipstick from one of the girls in the program." He said, "Now, I don't want you to do anything else for the girls in the program." He said, "Oh, that's right.

You can't." You know, he said, "I want you to borrow some lipstick from one of the girls in the program, and I want you to write on your mirror, Keith, you are wrong." I said, "I can't do that." You see, my problem is I have a poor self-image, and I need to be affirmed. Don't ever talk that way to an old-timer. I have never read any of those books.

And um so, I I bought a tube of lipstick. I didn't want to owe anything to anybody, especially a woman. Right, guys?

So, so I got I bought a tube of lipstick and I went home and I wrote on a mirror, "Keith, you were wrong." And I knew you're nuts. I mean, I'm I said, "These people are out of their mind. What's this got to do with anything?" And I threw the rest of the toothpaste or the lipstick in a trash can and I went off to bed.

And it was a normal night. A normal night for me at 60 days was I'd lay down and close my eyes. And for the first time that day, my mind woke up.

And it took off, you know, and it's it's talking to me. You're never going to make it. You'll be alone the rest your life.

What difference does it make your on and on and on, you know, and it's just awful, you know, and and finally in the middle of the night, I drift off to sleep. And then the leg cramps would set in. Remember the leg cramps?

Oh god. I'd jump up and down beside the bed. Those legs hurt to bed.

I'd lay back down. My mind would still be going in. 15 minutes where I had to get up.

I go, "Sound asleep." Remember that. Goodness. Sound of sleep.

It take three alarm clocks to wake me up, you know, and my mind's still working. You're going to go to work today and they're going to find out you don't know how to do your job and they're going to fire you. Doesn't matter because you're hopelessly in debt.

You're going to live in Skidro the rest of your life, but you that's what you deserve, you bum. And you know, just the usual stuff. And I went out and I started coughing.

I just wanted to die. I wanted to jump in the garbage disposal, but it didn't work. And and I went in the bathroom and I looked on the mirror and said, "Keith, you're wrong." I said, "Well, thank God because if I'm right, I'm in a hell of a lot of trouble." And And I want you to know that the great gift of alcoholics and arms is being wrong.

The more stuff I can be wrong about, the happier my life is. It's an amazing phenomenon. And yet I thought just the opposite.

I so desperately needed to be right that I used to change the argument to be right. If it was going badly and I started to suspected I might be wrong, I'd change the argument. And you know, and my poor ex-wife would just stop arguing.

She would just stop arguing. And I'll tell you how vicious women can be, guys. This is vicious.

I got everything I own in two suitcases and I'm headed down the steps. And my wife said, "And one more thing, if you don't mind a suggestion, don't turn around." Cuz she's not going to say something like, "You're the greatest lover I ever had." That is not what she's going to say. She said, "One more thing." And I said, "What's that?" And she said, "All those times when I stopped arguing with you was cuz you were you weren't right.

I just didn't want to argue with you. You were still wrong." And I thought, "How low can you go?" You know, I mean, you know, cuz I had this old idea that if you were wrong enough times, you had to leave the earth. I don't know why I thought that, you know, that that somehow they say, "Well, that's it.

You're out of here." Um, and what we know about being sober is the more I can be wrong, the freer I get. Think about it. What if we had been right?

What if we were right about the world? What if we were right about men or we were right about women? What if we were right about God?

Think about that. If I'd have been right about God, I'd still be trying to dodge him. So, the key to this whole deal is a willingness to be wrong.

And to the degree that I can be wrong, to that degree, I can be free. Free of all my old ideas. And that's what always bound me.

You know, Bill says that the the uh the problem um is lodged in the mind as well as in the body. And my mind was filled with a bunch of old ideas, a bunch of rules that never worked. Stuff that loving, well-meaning people passed on to me.

And then I distorted even more. My my saintly mother used to say, uh, if there isn't some jealousy, then there's no love. And of course, that's wrong.

Of course, that's wrong. If there's fear and insecurity, then there's jealousy. But jealousy has nothing to do with love.

Lack of jealousy has nothing to do with love. Jealousy has to do with how I feel about myself and what I think of myself. And that's we'll talk about that when we get into the later steps.

But I I had to be wrong about all these things in order to be free. And that's what the third step promises me, you know. And I love the third step prayer on page 63 in a big book, you know.

And you know what I love about it? It's just the way an alcoholic would do it. You finish the prayer, then what does what does it say?

We thought well about before taking this step. Well, it's too late. We just finished it.

You know, and after I tell you, AA will do it to you every time. They really will. They'll trick you every time.

You know, many of us said to our makers, we understood him. God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and do with me as thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will.

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

end quotation exclamation point. Then we thought well before taking a step making sure we were ready that we could at last utterly abandon ourselves in wait a minute wait just a minute you know and of course uh that's the decision that we make and we do think well about you know when I'm working with guys I sponsor I mean we talk a lot about this we talk a lot about it we last utterly abandon ourselves to him let's try it for five minutes let's for five minutes try to utterly abandon ourselves to him I'd say to what's your concept of God? And they might say, "Well, a loving father sounds good." And I said, "Well, what would a loving father want for you right now?" And uh he said, "I don't know what." I said, "He'd want you to feel guilty and to hate yourself and to be fearful.

That's what a loving father would want." No, he wouldn't. Do you hate yourself? Yeah.

Are you fearful? Yeah. Then you're not yet ready to utterly abandon yourself to him because that isn't what he'd want for you.

Yeah. And we talk about these things. The guys that that I work with, we talk about these and we talk about the nature of God.

I don't know. I I wouldn't want to presume to know what Bill and all the old-timers were thinking. But I think God is I understand him.

Uh people always say, "Well, I'll never understand God." Well, of course not. I mean, my finite mind will never Maybe one day I will, but but on this earth, my finite mind will never understand the infinite him, the great I am. That'll never happen, of course.

But what I can know, what I can know is something of the nature of God. I remember when I was able to see my little girls, they came over and I lived in that basement apartment on in a rough part of Washington DC for two and a half years, sober, and I painted it and I put curtains up and I made it a comfortable place where I left. And it was just a tiny little place.

And the kids would come over, Kelly and Kimberly. And I remember um in the fall of the first year I was sober, I bought them coach. But I saved my money and they were $12.50 a piece and they were great coach.

They just loved them and and they and and I had a sofa that opened up into a bed and and I put them in that and then I take the cushions and make a wrap a sheet around make a bed out and lay lay down on the floor and I just watch them and and they made me hang their little coats on the back of the chair so when they woke up they could see them. And I was thinking about this. I had talked to a old-timer.

every once I'd slip up and talk to one of them and and um and he had begun the process. He he had me begin the process of thinking of the nature of God and and he said, "Think of God as creator, think of God as father. Think of God as protector.

Think" and he gave me a whole list of things and and I was thinking of God as father. And and I was these kids' father and God, I loved them. Gee, I loved them.

And I remember laying there and and I thought, you know, they love those coats. And I thought, uh, what if tomorrow morning they got up and they came and said, "Daddy, um, we want you to take these coats back. We don't deserve them." It would break my heart.

And yet my whole life, that's precisely the way I treated God. I gave him back or refused everything he gave me. You know, he gave me peace of mind and I opted for fear and and conflict.

You know, he gave me loving parents and and and my job was to be ashamed of our poverty and to see what was wrong with them and to determine why I've been cheated. He gave me a father who spent time with me every day that I let him. And I chose to see my father's dirty fingernails and the slivers of steel in his fingers from the mill and the smell of oil and cigars.

Um uh he gave me a father. we'd go play baseball and he'd take Dumb Danny and I to play baseball and and we'd ask him for a a soda and and sometimes we'd go down and get a pop as we call it where I grew up and we get a pop at the diner outside. It was a street car diner outside the um the mill and uh there were you know when the men were in the mill they weren't out there so it would be empty and we go and we'd sit at the bar where the men sat and and I'd have a a um I'd have a a orange pop and Denny would have a grape and dad would have a root beer and they were 6 cents a piece and there were days when we'd go there and dad would say I'm not very thirsty why don't you guys have and I'll just take a drink of yours and I know now that those were days he only had 12 cents and then there were days when he'd say, "You know, mom looked lonely when we left.

Why don't we go back? She probably has some iced tea or some Kool-Aid or something. Let's go back and spend time with mom." And that's when he didn't have 12 cents.

And I opted to see poverty instead of a man who loved that much. Just loved with everything he had. And and so I always opted to see those things.

And that's what I'd done to God my father. Everything he'd ever presented to me, self-will and selfishness and self-centerness had whooped it to a point that I destroyed it. I killed it.

And I had to come to you to learn how to think differently. You know, the third step is the way I did it. You continue to confront me and confront my old ideas.

I I'll give you one. was uh uh I had an idea uh really had an idea that once you found out what the problem was that you had to immediately find the solution and if you didn't you'd have to drink. I really thought that Alcoholics Anonymous is about solving problems.

My problems, not your problems. The hell were your problems? My problems.

And u and and I'd start running around. I'd drive people crazy. I'd start running around.

And you know, you go to old-timers, they speak in parallel. They never answer your question. It's the strangest thing.

And and I remember one time I went to this old-timer and there was a problem. I think it was August of 70 or 73. Terrible month, August.

And and I and I went to this old-timer and he said to me, "You know, Keith, I don't know the answer to that." And he said, "But there's a guy down at the at the Metropolis Club, who knows, and his name's Amos." And and so I went down and Metropolis Club and I asked for Amos. Amos was out on the 12step call. I said, "I got to talk to him.

I'm thinking I got about 45 minutes to live." and uh cuz I got to you know and and he said Amos will be back shortly cuz there's going to be a meeting and so I waited and Amos came in he had a drunk with him and uh so I ran up to him I said I got to talk to you he said well son he said I'll talk to you right after the meeting I said I got to talk to you now he said look sit next to me he said no one sitting next to me ever died and I said all right so I sat next to him and and when the meeting was over he's a wonderful man a kind time kind to me he said no one sitting next to me ever died and I said all right so I sat next to him and and when the meeting was of He's a wonderful man, a kind, kind man, black man with his kind, kind kind eyes. And and I said to him, I told him what my problem was. And he said, uh, he said, "I don't know the answer to that." And I said, "Oh, no." And I said, I said, "I thought you could help me." He said, "Well, I don't know the answer to that." He said, "But I have a suggestion." I said, "Well, anything." And he said, "Don't drink even if your ass falls off." I remember driving home thinking, "That's the most profound thing I ever heard in my life." and and I came to understand something about Alcoholics Anonymous.

It's not about solving problems. Alcoholics Anonymous is about finding solution. There's a solution for living.

It doesn't matter what the problems are. The problems disappear because of the solution, not because we figure out the problem. And you know, unfortunately, I go to meetings in a lot of places and what happens?

Somebody will say, "Anybody here have a problem?" You ever hear those? You know, somebody says, "My mother had a square nipple." You know, and It 50 un 50 untrained psychiatrists spend an hour dissecting this problem, you know, and and it's got it's not about problems. It's about solutions.

It's not about sharing feelings, you know, it's about I remember I was I went to a meeting. I'd been in a treatment center and they never told me that AA was sharing feelings, but that's what I learned. I mean, that was the impression I got.

So, I go trottting off the meeting and I want to belong. I mean, I really want to belong because if I don't belong, I'm a dead man. I knew that, you know, and uh and I didn't know how to belong other than to act the way I thought you wanted me to act and say the things I thought you wanted me to say and then you'd like me enough to let me stay around.

That's the way I live my life. Not proud of it. It's just the way it was.

And so I got to this problem and it came to this meeting and it came to me and I shared my feelings and a great hush fell over the crowd and uh and they looked at me for a moment. Then they went on and uh and I went back the next week and a man met me at the door and he said, "Hi, how are you?" He said, "You have a good week?" I said, "Yes, sir, I did." He said, "You know, after you left last week," he said, "We had a business meeting." He said, "The vote was 12 to nothing. Nobody gives a damn how you feel." He said, 'If you don't like the way you feel, wait five minutes, you'll feel different.' I said, 'You know, that's true.

That's true. Cuz I was like this, you know. And he said, we're interested in what you do.

He said, Alcoholics Anonymous is a is a is a program of action. He said, we want you to take certain actions which we took, and if you'll take these actions that we took, you'll get what we got. And he said, and then the day will come when you won't care how you feel.

I'm thinking I can't imagine that. But uh and you know it has there's a a good friend of AA uh he's not himself an alcoholic but I spent a lot of time with this man he's a wonderful man he's a Jesuit and a priest and a PhD in psychology and all that stuff and name's John Powell and and I asked John at the international 1980 in New Orleans I spent some time with him and I said John you about seven years six seven eight years tough time and and I was tired of it you know what I mean I mean I was trying to work a spiritual program it's like holding my breath you know I mean I had all these things going on and all these character defects running wild and I'm trying I'm trying to control them and I'm just losing ground quickly and and uh and I said to him I said John what's this crap all about this spiritual this spiritual life what's it all about you know I've been acting spiritual I mean that's what you do you act spiritual and he said you know Keith said you're in a perfect place to do this he said he said maturing he said with spiritual a spiritual life it's just a matter of maturity and he said The first thing that everybody must do is to discover who they are. And I said, "And who they aren't." He said, "That's right.

Who they aren't." And he said, "The second thing is to fully accept who we are." He said, "Then the third thing is to forget who you are." I thought, "Man, that's right." You know, I'd known spiritual people or religious people who who had a spiritual experience, a spiritual awakening. I have nothing against that. Believe me, I've had them.

But they have like a boom, like a a a top of the mountain experience, and then they'd run around inflicting that experience on everybody else. Well, the problem was they hadn't gone through the process. They didn't know who they were.

You know, they meant well, but they didn't know they were being obnoxious. You know, they they hadn't accepted who they were, and they hadn't forgotten who they were. Self was stuck all over that.

Then I look at old-timers and alcoholics synonymous. They're laid-back and they're easy and they say rough things to us and they say it in a way that we're not offended. We even laugh, you know, and and that's their way of telling us they love us, you know, and and and then we do stuff to them, too.

We have a guy in town. He's a wonderful guy, but he's supposed to be, you know, uh seeing impaired, right? So, he feels his way to the meetings and all this stuff.

Well, he gets on the kids a lot, you know? He's he's rough on the kids. And so, they always exact revenge.

You got to watch young people. They can't be trusted, you know. I I think you know a certain time they ran out of souls and they kept making bodies and we got some of them and they ate or young people with no souls and and so what they did to this guy he's a great old guy just love him.

What they did to him though was he's he can't see right where they they put a dime under the chair in front of him and he comes in and he's feeling his way in and all he sits down and he looks and he sees that dime and they reaches down and picks it up and they all laugh and point at him and everything. mean kid. But the third step, the third step is this process where I come to accept that most of what I know is wrong.

I I've misinterpreted all these principles that that I've grown up with. I mean, I I love what Sandy B said. The receiver was broken.

I heard all the right stuff. And and I tell you how many times in Alcoholics Anonymous I've heard, I was taught a god that does this and I used to do that stuff. I was religiously anti-religious.

I really was. I mean, I was waiting to be offended. You know, I was going to whip out the Constitution on some people in the meeting of alcoholics noms.

They talk about God and I was ready to jump all over them and everything. Well, of course, uh the book says we don't apologize for God. Of course, we don't apologize for God.

It says that we're reborn. We are reborn. And I think what that means is that is that my old ideas become changed.

And the third step is simply the process where I begin to accept the fact that my old ideas are going to be changed and that I come more and more to rely upon being a member of Alcoholic Anonymous, rely upon this process where I put myself in a position to hear the antithesis to what I believe to be true. And I swear that all the things I swore I take to the grave with me, I no longer believe are true. And I can't remember when it changed.

It just did. It changed cuz I was hanging on to it. That's why it changed.

It changed because I defined it and said, "This is where I stand." I tell you, the guys I sponsor who say, "I'm not doing this and they they they lay it all out, tell me all the stuff they're not going to do." I said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, fine." You know, and then they go and do it. But the people who won't define it and remain vague about who they are and what they are and what they believe and all the rest of it, those are the people who never change. You know, I love a guy who fights me.

Even if he's doing it inside, you can just see it who died made him king, you know. And uh I love that because they're taking a position. And that's what the third step's about.

The third step's all about taking a position because then I can change. But if I don't take a position, I'll never change. Okay?

And then we go to the fourth step. And uh hold on. I just wanted to briefly mention we'll kick to tomorrow off with the fourth step.

I I wanted to to briefly mention that if anybody wants to do any work or wants to spend any time talking or anything, I'd be awful happy to sit down with you. Okay. Uh they gave me a nice room up there and then they gave me an adjoining room with a table and a couple chairs.

If you want, anybody wants to sit down and talk or do some work or you want to get started on a fourth step or this, I'd be awful happy to sit down and help you. And there there are a number of ways to to do the fourth step. And this is heresy, but I could not figure out how they did it in a big book.

I couldn't figure it out. Now, next week I'll be down in Florida talking with Joe and Charlie. If I had met them, maybe I could have figured out, but I couldn't figure it out.

It made no sense to me. It just made no sense to me. And here I am running around for three years in Alcoholics Anonymous, not doing a fourth step because when I tried it, it made no sense to me.

And I had a man who knew enough about me and knew enough about Alcoholics Anonymous and the man who was sober longer than me and and agreed to be my sponsor. And he saw me unable to do this. And it wasn't cuz I didn't want to.

I just didn't understand it. My mind just wouldn't work in those boxes in those columns. So he took a yellow pad and he wrote fear and he skipped two pages and he wrote anger.

and in parenthesis he put resentments and he skipped two pages and he wrote sex and left the rest of the yellow pad. I was a guy who had run around looking for the right pencil or the right pen cuz if I had the right pen in the right notebook I'd write the fourth step. If I had the right pen I had the wrong notebook, right?

And so finally he told me he said look he said I'm going to let you on a secret. He said now don't share this with anybody. Just a few of us know this in Alcoholics Anonymous.

He said, "It's impossible to lie with a yellow pad and a number two pencil." He said, "Now, don't spread that around." You know, so he gave me a yellow pad and a number two number two pencils. And he said, "Now at night, sit down and ask God to direct your thinking." And and he said, "Right." And he said, "I want you to list the things you're afraid of." I said, "I'm not afraid of anything." And he said, "Well," he said, "It seems to me one time he told me you're afraid of dogs." I said, "Well, big dogs. I'm afraid of big dogs." So he said, "All right, write down big dogs." So I wrote down big dogs.

And I thought for a minute, I said, 'You know, Sandy, I'm not wild about little dogs. He said, 'Well, write down little dogs. So I wrote little dogs.

And and then we began and fear of heights, fear of failure, fear of success on and on. And what I discovered when I listed my fears, what I discovered was I had a tremendous number of fears and conflict. And you think about it, I'm a guy who was afraid of being alone and I was afraid of intimacy.

Boy, that'll have you jumping in and out of relationships, won't it? It's no wonder my wife would say, "Who showed up?" You know who showed up? I mean, one day I couldn't live without her.

The next day, I was rejecting everything about her. I was a guy who's afraid of success and afraid of failure. Think about that one.

What I do is I'd find a job and I go like crazy and I'd become real successful and then I'd blow it because, you know, you get successful, they're going to expect more out of you know how they are. and and and I began to understand I mean it began to it began to dawn on me why I was insane. I mean I had these constant fears and and I had them on both ends of the spectrum and I and I lived in constant turmoil and constant conflict.

You know I was I was sober not very long and Dan was still my sponsor and and Dan told me to I you know I came to grips with an old idea I had Dan told me to he said I want to see you at the Fox Hall group. He said there are a couple men speaking that I want you to hear. And I said I don't go to that group and he said why didn't why don't you go to that group?

I said, "They're a bunch of snobs." And he said, "You ever been there?" I said, "No." Said, "I heard they're a bunch of snobs." He said, "Well, you don't even know them, Keith." He said, "They're a bunch of alcoholics." He said, "I want you to go." I said, "I'm not going, Dan. I'm not going to do it." And he said, "Uh, we had an agreement. If I did what he said, he wouldn't break my knee." You know, that was our agreement.

He made it up. Um, and he said to me, "I want you to go." I said, "I'm not going." He said, "I'll break your knee." I said, "I'm still not going." And he said, "Uh, why why aren't you going to go?" I said, "They don't even use styrofoam cups." I said, "They have their own cups." And he said, "Well," he said, "You know, they they decided they didn't want a bunch of styrofoam." He said, "What the make you what?" He said, "They wash them. You don't wash them." And I said, "Yeah." I said, I said, "You know that they have a bunch of, you know, like uh little finger food and stuffed mushroom caps and stuff." And and he said, "Well," he said, "You know, Keith," he said, "You know, it's a social event and a lot of people are retired and they they enjoy that and they come there and they they" He said, "What do you care?" He said, "Just be there." And so I did what any normal alcoholic would do.

I I found the rattiest clothes I could wear, find and and I took my own styrofoam cup and and I went to the meeting and um and I was going through the through the line and there was a man there named Philip Harmon and and Philip or Philip Roland, I'm sorry. And Philip was a professor of romantic poetry at Georgetown University. He's an odd duck.

He had a handlebar mustache. He had handlebar eyebrows. I never saw anything like this.

I have a long time member of Alcoholics Anonymous and later became a great friend of mine and he le he was back there with all the finger food and stuff and and I got my styrofoam cup and I got these really ratty clothes on. I mean I never would have worn anything like this, you know, and I'm going through the line and and and and uh Roland said, "How do you like our meeting?" And I said, "The Swedish meatballs suck." And my sponsor hit me in the back of the head. He said, "Get through the line." And and so I was just a wreck, you know?

I mean, I was just a wreck. I sat there. I couldn't think and everything.

And so he said, "We got to talk." So after the meeting, we went out and we sat on the stone bench. I'll never forget it. And he said, "What's the matter with you?" And I started to cry and I said, "I hate these people." And he said, "What do you mean you hate these people?" He said, "They're alcoholics." I said, "They're rich people.

I hate them." And then he asked me a very interesting question. He said, "Do you want to be poor the rest of your life?" I said, "Of course I don't want to be poor the rest of my life." He said, "You know, you will have to be if you don't change your your old ideas." He said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Somewhere along the line, you got the impression that people who were successful or accumulated anything were bad." And I thought about it and you know, my parents never said that. They never said that.

But we really were poor. And the implication that poor people, the implication of poverty is you're somehow spiritually superior. You're better than them because they got what they got, ill gotten gains by stepping on your neck.

Now, nobody said that to me, but that's what I grew up with. That's what I brought out of poverty. And Dan said, "You've worked hard all your life." I said, "I went to work when I was 12 years old." He said, "Why don't you have anything?" I said, "Well, that woman divorced me." He said, "No, it's not her." He said, "She doesn't have anything either." And she does.

She didn't get it from you. And he said, "Why is it that you would begin to accumulate something and then you would blow it on a stupid purchase or a dumb investment?" And it and I knew why. I remember as a little kid my my father was invited to every Christmas was the worst thing that happened to my dad all year every Christmas and man who owned it think about it but they come and go and and and and and I accept that I accept that but the fears that that root me to my past you know the fears that dictate the terms of my life the fears that are so subtle that it has me behaving in ways I don't even understand for example I used to get angry with my wife if she was sick Now, that's crazy.

I mean, I would get angry with her. I And I would be cross with her if she was sick. And suddenly, when I'm doing my inventory, I came to realize that I was afraid of losing people.

Always afraid of losing people. Um, I was afraid of uh of being broke. And I realized that, you know, my father used to say, "We go to the poor house.

We're going to go to the poor house." I had no idea where it was, but I didn't want to go there. It's like the wayside. I mean, nobody wants to go to the wayside.

I've never been to the wayside, but nobody wants to go there cuz everybody says don't fall by the wayside, you know, and don't go to the poor house. I mean, there are certain places you just don't want to go. And and and I began to understand that fears drive me.

Fears drive me. And then I listed my the things with at which I was angry. And I I found out that the majority of the anger that I carry around, the majority of it comes from the fact that I'm fearful.

My reaction to fear is anger. You know, I found out that I I would always end up with women that I didn't want to be with anybody. I don't mean that they were bad women, don't get me wrong.

They were tough, you know what I mean? I mean, they were tough and they were competitive, you know, and they would like to beat you around the head and shoulders with hammer like blows. I I mean, you know, it was just it was just always this constant, you know, conflict and headbanging and all this stuff.

And I couldn't figure out why I always ended up. And in my inventory, I began to understand. I was so afraid of women that I would always come across as a very angry man.

And the only women who could put up with me were the ones who liked angry men. And they weren't the ones I wanted to be with. And so I always ended up dating people I didn't want to be with.

Well, once I began to understand that and I could actually say to someone, you know, I may appear angry, what I really am is frightened. And I could then be around people I wanted to be around. And that that's why I'm married to the woman.

I'm married to the kindest, most gentle human being I've ever met in my life. My wife and I have known each other 15 years. We've been married over 10 years and we've had two arguments.

The second one happened. We were married a month and we began to disagree and I began to raise my voice. I mean, I don't raise it much, but just and I stopped and I said, "I love you more than anybody in the world and I'm going to raise my voice.

There's something wrong here." And I remember the axim 10 step and it was a problem with me. And I said, "There's a problem with me. I'm going to go call my sponsor." And she said, "You know, there's a problem with me, too.

I'm going to go call my Allen on sponsor and we want we called our sponsors and that's how we deal with our problems. We don't deal with our problem. We don't get together and talk it out.

You know what getting together and talking it out means. You know what it means? It means I want another opportunity to change your mind.

That's all it means. You know, but if I approach it that if if I'm at unrest or if I'm unhappy or if I'm conflicted, then the problem's with me. It's not what you do.

The problem's with me. And these are the things I began to learn as I listed the things that I was angry with. Okay?

And then I spent time with sex. And I'll tell you, I don't understand sex. I mean, I understand a little bit about the mechanics, you know, but I was so messed up about what I believed, what I didn't believe, what I was guilty about, what I wasn't guilty about, all the rest of it.

My sponsor said, "You start at your ear earliest recollection and you write everything you can think And I'll tell you, this sounds silly, but I remember when I was like 3 years old, my sister, two years older than me. You know, it's wor You'd rather have the plague than an older sister. I'm telling you, older sisters are the meanest people in the world.

They do stuffy. It's awful. Just awful.

Like she used to say to my mother, "Mother, I'll take Keith to the movies with us." And my mother say, "You're such a good girl." And I get all excited. You know, what a dummy. I get all excited.

And then she'd take me down to the bus stop. her girlfriends would come and they'd say, "What's the idiot doing? Is he going to come with us?" And and I had big ears stuck out.

I look like a taxi cab with the back doors open. I was a skinny kid. Big ears are stuck out.

She'd say, "No, he's going to flap his ears and fly down there. He'll meet us down there." And pretty soon I'd end up crying and running home. And my mother would say, "What's the matter with you?

You ungrateful little kid as nice as your sister is." Older sister's a terrible. And she put a dress on me. She put a dress on me.

She said, "You're gonna be a little girl today." And I was three years old. I did it. You know, I never forgot that.

Here I'm 30 years old and I know that secretly I'm probably a transvestite and I just refuse to face. Insane, isn't it? I mean, it's insane, but it it's insane cuz it's in there.

Once I wrote it down, I said, "I haven't worn a dress in 27 years. I'm probably not a transgender. I don't even want to wear a dress, you know.

I'm probably all right. But I mean, you know, I mean, it sounds crazy, but in there it holds great power. So, I wrote down everything that I could think of.

Now, I'm going to talk more about the four step tomorrow, but the reason I wanted to get into it a little bit tonight is anybody here who wants to start an inventory process and if you're really having a hard time understanding how this works, you know, that's how my sponsor had me start it start it. Okay. Now, I've taken a number of them, okay?

And I I have taken them the way the book says once I finally got it my head around what it meant. But he had me do this and then he had me answer the questions in the 12 and 12. How and in what way did my selfish pursuit of sex damage others?

Who was hurt? D. He said write down the questions and write down the answers.

And that's the way I did it. And it served me very well until you know it kept me sober long enough to do it the way I said it in the fourth step. So I just wanted to sort of throw that out as a suggestion.

Are there any thoughts or questions or anything? I'm doing all the talking and you guys are doing all the listening. Any questions about any of this?

Comments. >> Real glad you're here. >> Pardon?

>> I'm real glad you're here. >> I'm delighted to be here. I really am.

Thank you very much. I am really pleased to be here. It's a very special place, isn't it?

You know, any place that a couple alcoholics get together special. You know, my brother Dub Denny made an interesting observation. Uh he said to me one time he said um I had asked him some years ago to come to play my member gas golf tournament while I was living in Fedville and he had just begun playing golf and he said okay he'd come and he came and and we're best buddies.

I just can't tell you. I mean we're so we're because of the ninth step and I'll share with that that with you tomorrow because of the ninth step. We're the way we were when we were kids.

You know, he played shortstop and I played second base and we turned double plays and and we were best buddies and we confided I like her and I like her and you know all that stuff. It was wonderful and uh and then because of my self-centerness and my self-absorption I lost that and uh as a result of the ninth step ethan I got it back and he and I are just dear friends just dear dear friend and and u he gave me an insight u he had come down to play my member guest and he came a week early and and it was an AA golf tournament over in Pinehurst and and so I said would you like to play he said yeah and he had individually met friends of mine in AA but he had never met a group of you together And uh and so we went over and we played the the golf tournament and it was a two-day tournament and then we practiced all week and then we played my tournament. No, I called him up the next year.

I said, "Can you come for the member guest?" He said, "I'd love to." He said, "The AA tournament, too." And I said, "Well, I don't know if there's one or not. I'll check." He said, "You know, that's the best time I ever had." And I said, "Really?" And he said, "You don't know what you have." He said, "We met two guys on the first tea." And he said, "You'd never met him before." He said, "By the fourth hole, you're cursing each other." He said, 'You assume a love and a friendship that I don't presume with people I've known for 20 years. He said, "Alcoholics are special people." He said, "Members of Alcoholics Anonymous have capacities that nobody else has." And you know, it's true.

It's true. I can know you five minutes and I can know everything I need to know about you. And I not only know, I care about you.

And I know even more important than me caring about you is I know you care about me. Yeah. Thanks a lot.

>> Good morning. >> Everybody have a good night. >> Well, I slept like a rock.

I'd like to to moan and whine this morning, but I just can't. I just slept really well. I heard our hostess was whining to brother Andre this morning about something.

I don't know what it was. She's making bad signs at me. I don't think that's very spiritual, but in a murder trial, a defense attorney was cross-examining a pathologist.

Here's what happened. Attorney, before you signed a death certificate, had you taken the pulse? Coroner: No.

Attorney, did you listen to the heart? Coroner, no. Attorney, did you check for breathing?

Coroner: No. Attorney, so when you signed his death certificate, you weren't sure the man was dead, were you? Coroner.

Well, let me put it this way. The man's brain was sitting in a jar on my desk, but I guess it's possible he could have been out there practicing law somewhere, you know. Um, we were talking about, um, that's for Ray.

Okay. Uh, if anybody runs into him, we're out there practicing practicing. We're out there um or last night we were talking about about the fourth step when when we broke up and and and I'd like to get back to that a little bit if I could.

and and I had said it uh that there's basically a simple way that my sponsor led me into this and and um and it it concerns me that that people get so dogmatic that everything has to be done a certain way and u we actually have a member of my group who won't doesn't like to read the 12 and 12 because I don't know whether it's heretical or what it is and uh and and you know it's easy for us to forget that what we do here share our experience strength and hope. Um the man who took me through the steps loved the 12 steps and 12 traditions. So basically that's what we always refer to as the 12 and 12.

We also I read the big book. I read it every day. I mean so again I don't want to sound like Martin Luther nailing up a bunch of thesis or something like that but but uh um I I just think there's a lot of ways to approach this deal and I always ultimately go back to doing it the way the big book says.

I just want to make sure I cover all my bases. Uh but um but uh Sandy had me uh do the thing I talked about with the fear and the the anger and and my sex life. And then and then he had me answer the questions, write down the questions and answer the questions in um the fifth chapter uh or I mean step four of uh the the um uh 12 and 12.

And it begins on page 50 and it says when and how and in just what instance did my selfish pursuit of the sex relation damage other people and me? What people were hurt and how badly and of course and did I spoil my marriage and injure my children? Did I jeopardize my standing in a community?

Just how did I react to these situations at the time? Did I burn with the guilt that nothing could extinguish or that I insist that I was the pursued and not the pursuer and thus absolve myself? how have I reacted to frustration and sexual matters and it goes on and on.

Um then it goes on and talks about our financial uh situations and that sort of thing and and I find that found that to be particularly useful and whenever I am working with a guy um who's having a very hard time even if I get him the outline uh out of the big book and he's having a very hard time I usually have him do this and I particularly have him if people are emotionally very upset and sort of strung out I I I have them do it this way and then with the idea always of going back and and doing it Again, the other thing my sponsor had me do, which I found to be very very uh useful. He had me do some work with the seven deadly sins, you know, and they talk about them in in it in the uh 12 and 12. And and what he had me do is he gave me a little pocket notebook and I I buy them now by the gross and give them to guys that I work with.

And he instructed me to take one deadly sin at a time and of course in the book it says pride heads the list. So I wrote down pride and he said, "Now find a definition of pride that makes sense to you." So I began looking in dictionaries and talking to people and all kinds of things. And I put together a definition of pride that made sense to me.

And um and he said, "Now I want you to during the course of the day as things uh occur, I want you to look at how pride enters into your life." He said, "It's critical to see how the seven deadly sins or character defects enter into our lives on a daily basis." And you know, it's amazing uh what pride will do. You know, um I find myself being irritated if the if the stoplight stops me and it lets the guy ahead of me go and then stops me. It's like there's a little man waiting.

Here he comes. Boom. We'll get him.

Look at him. Look at him. He's mad.

We'll get him. phone and next stop light. Uh, they'll get them, too.

Uh, no, it has nothing to do with the fact that I burn rubber away from the previous stoplight. I'm going 70 mph in a 35. It's got nothing to do with that.

It's got to do with the fact that they're waiting for me. I always get in the wrong line at the bank. I don't know if anybody else does issue.

And then I stand in that line and I'm watching the other line move faster. And I always get in a line with somebody who's hiding one of those bags full of change. you know, the that's what and and and I think I ought to be treated differently than that.

Um, and you know, during the course of the day, I'd stop whenever this would happen. Impatience is one of the signals for me of pride. Whenever it would happen, I'd stop.

How do I want to be treated differently? And I'd jot it down. And, you know, by the end of the day, it's amazing how pride enters into our life.

um uh this whole concept of poor self-image. You know, in Alcoholics Anonymous, you hear a lot about poor self-image and you hear a lot about the need to be affirmed. I I don't mean to be politically incorrect, but I have a friend I said to him, "How's it going up in Washington?" And he said, "Well," he said, "All the guys are suffering from pride." He said, "All the women are suffering from poor self-image." You know, so uh that's a popular one.

Um but this whole business of poor self-image is an amazing phenomenon and and um and and this this need to be affirmed. Um you know it's my uh wife uh when I was drinking my my wife was going to a psychologist which I was sure explained why I was drinking and u cuz she had emotional problems and um uh and he asked to see me and I thought you know here we go. She's told him all these stories, exaggerated stories about my drinking and my behavior and stuff, but but I really loved her.

I really wanted it to work and and and I really wanted what was best for her as much as I could. So, I went to see this psychologist. So, he talked to me and she was sitting there and u and he asked me some questions and then finally he asked me the biggie.

He said, "Your wife uh says you drink a lot." I said, "That's true. I drink a lot." And he said, "How much do you drink?" And I said about a half a fifth a day. Now, it was really about a fifth a day, but I never counted it if I didn't have to pay for it.

You know, it's like like my liver was saying, "Here comes a free one, you know, don't pay any attention to it." Uh, and you know, I mean, we have these ways of keeping count. And um uh so so he he thought he nodded his head. And he said um and I asked him that question.

It just fearful. It just dragged it out of myself. And I said, "Do you think I'm an alcoholic?" And my wife has some very strong opinions on this, you know.

And he said, "No, certainly not." He said, "U" he said, "You're too young." And he said, "You're too intelligent." And he said, "But if you keep drinking like that, you will be an alcoholic." And I said, "Well, when you know, I thought it was important cuz I I wanted to quit in time." You know what I mean? I mean, you didn't want to, you know, drink to be an alcoholic. You have to be crazy to do that.

And he got a little put out with me. And he said, "I don't know." He said, "A couple years." So, right away, I formed this plan. I'm going to quit in a year and a half and I'll be all right.

And um if you're new and you're thinking like that, you're already there. I hate to tell you this. But then he went on to say, he said, "Your problem is that you have a very bad self-image." And then he turned to my wife and he said, "And part of the problem is yours." And I'm thinking, I don't know what we're paying this guy, but he's worth every dime.

and uh and and then he went on to explain that I needed to be affirmed and he'd actually done his doctoral thesis on affirmations and so as we were talking about computers and things well this is when they had that electronic type remember IBM made that you can make a different size fonts and things like that and and he took my own personal history and he gave me my own personal affirmations there were two full pages of and it says Keith's affirmations I still happen someplace. And um and so he told me, he said, "Now, every morning, I want you to get up and I want you to go to the mirror first thing and I want you to tell yourself these things." And he said to my wife, he said, "And I want you to stand with him if you can because if you're there while he's affirming himself, it'll be further affirmation for him." And I'm thinking, "And maybe we'll undo some of the damage he's done to me." And um and so I was so dis well you can understand I was just delighted to find out I wasn't an alcoholic. So I got very drunk that night and um and evidently I said some of those things I was want to say when I was drunk and the next morning I was affirming myself all alone.

You can bet on that. And uh and I never forget I stood in front of that mirror, you know, and I I looked at those yellow bloodshot eyes and and and I had my list of Keith's affirmations and the very first one was Keith, today you're a winner. You know, today you're a wonderful husband, no matter what she thinks, you know, and and today you're a loving father and a good researcher and on and on.

I got about halfway through that list and I said, "Today you're full of crap. That's what you are." you know, you know, I may have been an alcoholic, but I wasn't insane. I mean, I knew this wasn't true.

I knew this wasn't true. And and the reason I I like to think about that story, and I like to tell that story is because because that's the way I treated what was wrong with me my whole life. I I I I piled tried to pile good things, good acts, uh affirmations, pats on the back, uh job well done, that boys.

I tried to pile all those on this rotten structure that was my life. And of course, what Alcoholics Anonymous tells me is that I have to go in and I have to tear out the structure and have to start all over. And and it really cautions me, you know, and in the in the big book it says it's a foundation firm, you know, have you uh put too much sand in the mortar and on and on.

I mean, they ask very very very important questions. So, I can't be fixed from the from the top down. I have to be repaired from the bottom up.

And that's the the uh the fourth step of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's why it's critical to have turned your will life over to the care of God before this process begins. Because once I made that decision, my will in my life was no longer my business.

I call my sponsor up and be be whining about something. He said, "Well, it's none of your business. It's God's business.

You made a decision to turn your will in life over to care of God and you stay out of it. you're a guy who screwed it up in the first place. And uh he said and he said, "What if I gave you a car?" I said, "I'm be a good idea." He said, "No, no, no." He said, "This is hypothetical.

What if I gave you a car?" And then every couple of months I called you up and said, "Have you had it tuned up? Have you changed the oil? You know, do you rotate the tires?" He said, "You'd say to me, look, you give me the car, you didn't.

If you want it, come and take it back." And he said, "So, don't question these things. Just do the work. Just do the work." and he said, "Disassociate yourself from how you feel about it.

Just do the work." Critically important information for me. And so I began to tear it out. Bill Wilson's concept, what a brilliant man.

His concept of character defects are interesting. They aren't what happened to me. You know, they aren't the fact that mother had a square nipple or I was put on a potty chair backwards and I've been confused ever since.

I didn't know which end was up or anything like that. His concept was what's wrong with me is that my normal instincts, normal god-given instincts have become warped. That's an ugly word, warped, but um it's his word.

And that as a result of that, my behavior is abnormal. I want more of everything than is do me. Um that I I become um selfish and self-centered.

Uh I asked my sponsor one time, somebody accused me. his heart of Lee, but somebody accused me of being self-centered. And I was really insulted and uh and so I went to my sponsor and I said, "Tell me about this self-centeredness stuff." And he said, "Well," he said, he said, "Supposing that we could unscrew the top of your head and he said, "In your brain were a bunch of little index cards and every question you would ever ask is on those index cards." He said, "The question we'd run into most often is, "Hey, how about me?

Does anybody know I'm here? You know, I I like in the line this morning, I'm looking to see that there's enough bacon for me to, you know, when I get there, you know, there's more bacon there than we can all eat, but I got to make sure that there's enough there for me. Hey, how about me?

Has anybody anybody got mine, you know? And I said to my sponsor, I said, "Well, that's cuz I'm from a big family." He said, "No, it's because you're self-centered. Can't be that simple.

It's got to be something deep and and and Freudian and and and so that's what I had to do when I'm doing a fourth step. I had to to see how my normal instincts for sex, society, and security overran themselves and how I always needed more than everybody else. I give an example.

One of the problems with the people I've worked for over the years, I've worked for men and women over the years who meant well. The problem was they never understood their job description. You know, they thought their job was to supervise me or to tell me what to do.

They didn't know their job was to affirm me and make me feel good about myself. You know, I mean, I had a drill sergeant in the Marine Corps or a platoon sergeant in the Marine Corps who really thought his job was to tell me where to go and what to do. He didn't know his job was to make Keith feel good about himself and to affirm me.

Uh, and so I'd always end up angry with authority because authority never understood uh what their responsibility was to me. I could never get enough of it. Uh, I would u win the we won the baseball championship and I could feel good for 5 minutes.

Then I'd have to begin looking for the next stroke or the next pat on the back or any of the rest of it. And in a way, Alcoholics Anonymous, it was perfect for a place like me because in the beginning they'd pat me on the back and say, "Oh, you brushed your teeth today? You're doing very well." um you didn't drink today.

We're really proud of you. Um and on and on. And then of course that wears off and they start expecting you to do things like, you know, grow up.

You know, it's stuff like that is really none of their business. Um but but it's I think it's important for us to remember that what's critical to this whole process is uh that we dig out that stuff. We see the areas of our lives that are abnormal.

Particularly the areas where I'm making demands on people, places, and things that I have absolutely no right to demand. And of course, the solution for this stuff is to one recognize it. And then we have six and seven, which is a we share with God, ourselves, and other human being.

Then we go to six and seven, which uh is the place that we begin to unload and to dump some of these things. Okay? Uh and we let God take them out of our lives.

So, uh, that's basically the fourth step. Um, now again, I've done it a variety of ways. They've all worked.

How, how do I know they've worked? I'm sober. Okay, I'm sober.

I'm sober a long time. One of the things I bump into also is um I was talking to a guy um um Friday uh Thursday um a guy I sponsor and he said to me I want to I think I need to go back and he's had a traumatic time been through some difficult times and he said you know of his own making of course those are the best kind because it means at least we start out enjoying it um and it's somebody else's making we may hate it all the way True. But uh boy, if it's our making, you know.

Yeah. Well, at least I was in love for 3 days. Um uh and and and so he said, "I think I better go back and start at step one." And I said, "You need to go back and start at step one." I said, "You know, you're an alcoholic.

You know your power. You know your life's unmanaged. You've done all that stuff." I said, "Who's the next person on your eighth step list?" Well, that's where the problem is, isn't it?

It's always easy to go back and do it again. I I remember I I suffered about 12 or 13 years when I wanted to be my sponsor and um and I'd been through a couple years of extreme self-centerness and uh how about me? And uh and so I said to him, "Well, where would you like me to begin, Tom, with an inventory?" He said, "No." He said, "I never get I never want guys I never let guys who want to do inventories do inventories." He said, "That means that either you don't need it or you're too good at it." He said, "What I want you to do is go find a new guy." And of course, that's what I needed to do.

I was self-absorbed and self-centered again. So, I was saying, "Hey, how about me?" My friend Mike Weey always says, "Enough about me. What do you think of my tie?" And and that's the way I was that's the way I was living my life.

And uh and of course, what I wanted to do was become more self-centered by looking at me again and figuring out what's wrong with me. And of course, what was wrong with me was I was thinking about me. And what I needed to do was think about a new guy.

So, I went to a meeting that night and a new guy wandered in, you know, looking around, you know, and and I said to him, I said, "Is this your first meeting?" He said, "Yes, it is." I said, "My name's Keith." I said, "Let me explain how we do things here." I said, "Here, we assign ourselves as sponsors, so I'm your sponsor." And it was 3 months before he realized I couldn't do that. And by then, it was too late. He was he was used to me.

But I immediately went out and found somebody. I mean, that's what you do. And so I I I'm saying this because it is important to do this work, but I see people get stuck in this because somehow they believe that this makes them feel better.

Stirring this up and living here all the time makes me feel better. Living here all the time is narcissistic. You know, if if I had a warehouse full of goods, and they always they always use that example.

And if I go into inventory the warehouse, okay, and then I write down everything that's there and I go back the next day and do it again and go back the next day and do it again. Somebody might say to me, "Don't you think you might should be doing something else? You know what's there?

Maybe you ought to be doing something else with your life." And and again, I'm I don't you know, I love treatment centers. My life was saved in a treatment center. But I came out of that treatment center with a concept that getting sober was a matter of inventorying and sharing my feelings and sharing this and sharing that.

Now, that's important, but all that does is get us well enough to live life. And I always worry about people who live there. Okay?

Now, I do the spot check daily inventory. And when we get to the 10step, we'll talk about that. I do my 10-step inventory.

I mean, I do that. I look at my life. I don't let my life uh run unobserved.

I believe Socrates was right when he said that the unexamined life isn't worth living. But I don't think that Socrates meant we walk around staring at our neighbors all day. And asking ourselves that profound question, how does that make me feel?

You know, I mean, how I feel is none of my business. It's my will and life's been turned over the care of God. So, I want to say this because this isn't the biggest deal in the world.

The fourth step is not the biggest deal in the world. It's simply doing what I know. It's not doing what I don't know.

And this thought of if if I don't do it exactly right, a big hand will come down and put a drink in my mouth. I've seen people get drunk and the book says we get drunk if we don't do the step. It doesn't say we get drunk if we don't do it perfectly the first time.

So I think there's too much emphasis put on this in a lot of people's lives because it's fearful and you know that just do it. Just do it. And one way to do it is to set a date to do the fifth step.

You know, we don't like to fail. So we'll be ready. You know, we'll be ready.

we'll do as well as we can do and and and the fifth step of course is is uh I think one of the reasons that four is fearful is because the fifth step is there you know and the fifth step is made it to God to ourselves and another human being the exact nature of our wrong now I'm going to tell you what happened to me I had taken a a fifth step or a couple fifth steps I guess and uh fourth and fifth steps and then I sort of took the fourth step you know somewhere along the line you take the fourth Yeah. Uh Clarence uh Snyder used to say uh you know you take the first nine steps one time. Well, everybody used to freak out, you know.

And he said, but he'd smile and say, you take at them for years. And I think that's true. I think we take at the inventory steps for years and then one day they're done.

You know, one day it it happens and and I took the uh fourth and fifth step. Now I've done inventory work ever since. I at least twice a year.

My friend Mike W and I, we've done this for 25 years. We do our semiannual house cleaning. We both get our yellow pads and we write and we get together and we talk.

Uh, and we keep each other current, but but we do that. And uh so I I do that but but my the fourth and fifth step that was the one I took and um and I uh uh took my u fifth step. My sponsor wouldn't let me take it with him.

And and I said why? And he said I'll tell you later. And the later the reason was that he was he knew that how what he thought of me was too important to me.

I really wanted to please him. I've always wanted to please those in authority and I really wanted to please him and he was afraid I would be less than forthright with him and it would be a lot easier for me to be honest truly honest with somebody else and so he arranged for me to take it with a man named Ed C. And um and I uh u I I went and Ed gave me specific instructions and and I'm really glad he told me to do this.

He said, "I want you to do precisely what the step says." And I said, "Yeah, I'm going to share with you, God, and another human being." No, no. I want you to do exactly what the step says. Admit it to God.

He said, "Is there any place that you experience God?" And I said, "Well, yeah, there is. There is." He said, "I want you to go there and take your fourth your fifth step with God." I thought he's out of his mind, you know. But I went back to that chapel that I had uh begged God to save my little girl's life in.

And I sat down with my fifth step and I told God exactly who I was. And it was an amazing experience for me because I left there knowing that God loved me. And the fear I had about God and everything was largely gone.

Then I went home cuz he told me, "Now when I went to see God, I put on a three-piece suit." You know, I hadn't been there in a while. And uh and um and I reminded him I was the one who would serve 5:45 mass when it was snowing and nobody else wanted to do it. I mean, you got to got to grease the kids a little bit.

But um but then I said to God, I said, "Father, as far as I know, this is who I am." And I read him my my fourth step. And then I went home and I sat in front of a mirror. You know, the full- length mirror, the kind you practice your golf swing in front of.

My wife thinks it's for other things, but she knows to practice your golf swing. And u and I told myself exactly who I was. An amazing thing happened.

I mean, I always thought I was afraid of other people. It turns out I'm not. I was afraid to God and of me knowing the whole truth.

And then I went to find Ed and it wasn't a problem at all. And I told Ed everything. Told him everything and he listened and and he was one of those guys who does it so well.

He's heard thousands of fifth steps and uh and he just knows the questions to ask and the things to say to to put you at ease and that sort of thing. And it was very very easy. As a matter of fact, he was down at the ocean down in Ocean City, Maryland, and I chased him down here, made him here at that night.

I was ready. I wanted to get this thing over with. I wanted to get on with my life.

But, you know, I'd lived in that prison too long. And uh he was kind enough to sit up till about 2:00 in the morning to to hear this thing. And I found out later that he had chased some woman down there.

So, I was he was really sacrificing for me. But uh then he sent me out on the boardwalk with uh at 2 o'clock in the morning with the big book to look at u to make those considerations to step six and pray that uh sevenst step prayer like to uh if I could I'd like to say a um um something about hearing fifth steps. I I think that truly the most humbling act that I as a recovering alcoholic ever ever gets to do is to hear someone's fifth step.

That a human being would allow me there still overwhelms me and I hear a lot of them in prisons and everywhere. Uh we have a room in our house. Uh we made a little chapel and and we do I hear fifth steps in there.

Uh but the fact that that a human being would honor me with that just amazes me. And I always come away just overwhelmed, just absolutely overwhelmed with the grace involved in being invited into a place that maybe no other human being had ever been invited before. And and it's funny, I don't remember what people tell me.

It's the strangest thing. I just don't remember what people tell me. It's like it passes, you know, in my ear and out the other ear or something like that.

And because it's not important that I know what's important is that I listen. Um I I always usually tell guys uh after I after I hear their their fifth steps that uh tell them a story. Um when I was uh uh blessed with a scholarship, I was sober.

I I I think that's worth talking about about pushing God's will. Um, I I was sober 4 months and I had this thing. I had to finish my education.

I don't know where it came from, but it became an obsession with me. Now, when I was drunk, I wasn't real worried about it. But now that I'm sober, four months, so I went and signed up for three courses.

Now, I didn't have any money, so I wrote the university I work for a bad check and signed up for three courses. And, uh, I knew that they would forgive me, and we get it straightened out somehow. And uh and and I it was two philosophy courses and a theology course and they were my majors and uh and so I went home and I bought the books and I went home and I opened the book and I began to read and I don't know if anybody had this experience but I knew all the words but no thoughts and I'd read a page and I'd say what did that page say?

All I can remember is it said page one. That's all I can remember. and and I couldn't remember a thought on the page and I panicked and I called my sponsor and he said, "You did what?" He said, "You get your ass over." That's that was always how we began our discussion.

So, so I went over and and he said, "Look," he said, "you're not ready to go to school." He said, "You have to talk to me about these things." He said, "Your brain is all messed up." It was just, you know, it was like three, I guess about a month before this. I called him one morning. I was on my way to work and I couldn't remember where I worked.

True story. I could not remember. I'm in a car.

I'm dressed up and I couldn't, this true story, I couldn't remember where I worked and he had given me a card, you know, and had taped a dime on it and he said, "If you're ever in trouble, call me." He used he used to tell me often, "Second most important thing in my life is your sobriety." He said, "It's second only to mine." And so I called him and I didn't want him to think that he's sponsoring a guy who couldn't remember where he worked because I I secretly believed that my real problem was I was insane. And I mean, that was a secret. And uh that I drank cuz I was insane.

That was that's I really believe that. So So I call him and and I said good morning Dan. How are you?

He said I'm fine. How are you? I said fine.

I just wonder how you were. And he said, "What's all that noise?" I said, "I'm calling you from a phone booth." And he said, "Your car break down?" I said, "No, car's fine. I was just wondering how you are." And finally, he said, "What's the problem, buddy?" And I said, "Well, it's not much of a problem, Dan.

I just can't seem to remember where I work." And u he always said the same thing. He said, "Oh, you can't remember where you work." I said, "A lot of us have had that problem. I've never met anybody else who had that problem.

But but but he said to me and he talked to me about, you know, that the book says that to pour alcohol in our brain is a very unnatural thing. And and and you know, we went through all that routine and everything. And and then like a a month and a half later, a month later, I'm signing up for two philosophy courses and a theology course, you know, and he he reminded me, you know, last month he didn't know where you were, kid.

You're keep bringing that stuff up, you know. He's like like you can't make a mistake. And um but he told me that day I called him.

He says he said, "Can I make a suggestion?" I said, "Anything I'm honest, willing, and open-minded, you know, after you made a fool of yourself, you get that way." And and he said, "If you ever have this problem again," he said, "I'd like to suggest that you try to remember to look at the front bumper of your car." He said, "You have a parking permit for the university." And I remember thinking, "Where do these people learn these things?" I mean, you know, they make life look so easy. How do they do this? And uh but at any rate, so he reminded me that that you know a month or so before that I couldn't remember where I worked and why was I signing up for courses and why did I write a bad check to the university for whom I worked and everything.

He said something to me it's critically important. He said God gives you everything you need when you need it. And he said don't push it.

He said every mistake you make will be because you push it. So I had to go back. I had to go to the registar apologize for the bad check.

it hadn't bounced back yet. So, so she stopped it so that it didn't they didn't charge me money on they were very good at me and everything and and I dropped it and he said keep the books and I said why I said just keep the books he said you you got to have a reminder on your bookshelf what happens when you do it your way and uh so I did that well you know one year later um I had to go see the chairman of the department and you know whenever the chairman of the department wants to see us for one thing it's to fire you we know that and because people in authority don't want to talk to you unless it's to fire you or to torment you and um he didn't understand his job was to affirm me and um and they always want to see you Monday morning and they tell you Friday afternoon so you get the whole weekend to think about it. So Monday morning I go I'm a wreck and um and he said to me he said Keith he said we're so proud of what you've done this last year and a half and he said uh he said I can't give you a raise.

I would I can't because it was a wage and price freeze in in effect then. And uh he said, "But I can give you this." And he gave me a letter. It was a full scholarship as long as I wanted to go to school.

I go to medical school, could have done anything I wanted to do, fully paid, and all I had to do is continue to work for him. He said, "Cuz we'd do anything to keep you here." I was just amazed. And and I went down to my office and u and uh my boss was there.

He's a professor there and a Jesuit priest, a research geneticist, a wonderful man, brilliant man. And he said, "Did Paul give you the letter?" I said, "Yeah." I said, "I'm overwhelmed." He said, 'Well, he said, he said said, um, you know, he said, ' They give me credits for books every year. And he said, you know, a book lasts me 15 years.

He said, so I've got all these credits. So, he said, here, and the only books I paid for to get my education were the books I paid for when I did it out of self-will. I never bought another book at that bookstore.

They were all free. And um and and I went in the office and sat down and um so I wouldn't fall down. And and I got a call from a woman who was at the Veterans Administration's office at the university and she said, "You were a veteran, weren't you?" And I said, "Yes, I was." And I said, and she said, "Well, you have education benefits." I said, "They've lapsed." I said, "They ran out." And she said, "Well, today the president's signing a bill to extend the benefits for you Vietnam era veterans." She said, "So, I figured it out.

And if you can carry 12 hours a semester, you can make $300 a month." And uh I was $150 a month in the hole. And uh and I just uh was overwhelmed. All that within an hour, first hour of getting to work.

And and I called my sponsor and said, "We better have lunch." And I discovered that it's a lot harder to accept what God delivers to me than I thought it was. I always thought I wanted good stuff. And I discovered how just how very difficult it is to get good stuff.

and out left to my own devices, I'll ruin good stuff because on some level, I'm not yet ready or I'm not supposed to get good stuff. So, I I really like to remember that. Okay, I really like to remember that when I'm talking about about the the fifth step that um that pushing God's will is always been a problem for me.

And that's whole all part of the amends process. Um, one of the things I learned and when I I went back and took a degree in philosophy and theology and one of the things I learned, uh, there's a a aologian at the university who had written a book and it was on the seven sacraments and uh, her name was Monica Hellwig or is Monica Helwig and she talked about the the sacrament that that um, Ed Dalling, Father Ed referred to as related to the fifth step of Alcoholics Anonymous, this business of where we tell another human, God and another human being. And and it talked about uh about how at one time the business of being excommunicated from the community was a big deal.

I mean, you know, there was one there was a time when people never went more than 10 or 20 miles from their home and and they absolutely needed to rely on one another. It was imperative that they rely on one another. And uh and so to be excommunicated was to die.

No one would speak to you. No one would give you anything to eat. No one would feed you.

No one would take you in and you just die. So being part of the community, being part of the world was very, very important. And then pretty soon a guy comes by on a horse and he says, "We're going to go fight something called the Crusades." And all the young men got sharp sticks or whatever they did.

And they got behind a guy on a horse and they go off and and they spent 20 years doing things they never could have believed they could ever do. Just horrible things. and uh and uh just doing the next thing like I did as an alcoholic.

I ended up doing they ended up doing horrible things and you know murder and plunder and rape and pillage and things like that. And then 20 years later they go back home and the town turns out and their boys are home and they're cheering them and telling them how wonderful they are and everything, but they know how they know the real story. They know who they really are.

And so they go to the priest and confess. And the priest tells them they're forgiven. And and uh and they said, "But we don't feel forgiven.

We feel outside of the community, you know, if they knew." And uh and of course God's forgiven him. Of course, God's always faithful to forgive if we ask them. But they felt foreign.

And so they the priest said, "Well, ask the community for for their forgiveness." So they would put on sackloth, which was the international sign of mourning. They would put ashes on their head and they would kneel outside the cathedral on Sunday when people were going into mass and they would say, "Please pray for us." And I think that the people probably got tired of tripping over them and they said, "Look, stop this. We'd have done the same thing if we'd have been in the same situation.

We're human beings just like you. We've never been tried that way. That's the only reason we haven't done those things." And I tell the guys that I hear their fifth step.

I tell them that story. I like to hug them and welcome them back into the community of man because I'd have done what you did if I'd have been in the same situation. And that to me is a crowning moment of those three or four or five hours or whatever it is.

the crowning glory that I have the opportunity to invite someone who felt as alienated and as outside of life as I had been back with all the as the military used to say all the rights there unto pertaining that's what we have we have full rights as human beings we come back and that's the magic of the fifth step and everybody remembers the great promises fifth step of on page 75, it talks about the fifth step. And I think this we always you always hear people read the promises uh the eighth or the ninth step promises, the ones on page 83 and 84 at meetings. I I really wonder about I mean I think it's fine.

I love those. I mean, if you got my original big book and you dropped it, it opened to page 83 and 84 and it has smudge prints on there because I come running home from work or wherever I was and I'd be trembling. I say, "Let me let me how's it going to be?

Let me see. We're going to know a new freedom and a new happiness." So, believe me, I really like those. But the implication or at least what a lot of newcomers come away believe in is this is what happens if you go to meetings.

You know what happens if you go to meetings? What happens if you go to meetings is we use more coffee. Okay?

Uh this is a result of doing the steps. The promises are a result of doing the work, not going to meetings. We had a uh I went to a meeting this past week.

Uh it was a a lunchtime meeting over in Ritville Beach nights group uh kitchen group and the topic was uh do I go to enough meetings? Now I'm not a guy who's against meetings. I went to first two years I was sober, I went to 500 meetings a year.

I went to them in other countries. You know, I went to them in languages I didn't even speak, which seemed appropriate because I drank in bars where they spoke languages I didn't speak. But but I mean, so I'd always gone to a lot of meetings, but meetings aren't the cure all.

You know, meetings is just that's just one. It's an important part, but it's just one part of the program of recovery. It's working the steps.

It's doing these things that change me that change me. Uh painful as they may appear to be. Okay.

And so I I I concern that we stress that we're we stress those promises so much without explaining that they begin to happen when we begin to get right with the world. Okay. But I like these promises.

We pocket our pride and go to it, illuminating every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past. Once we have taken this step, withholding nothing, we are delighted. We can look the world in the eye.

We can be alone at perfect peace and ease. Our fears fall from us. We begin to feel the nearness of our creator.

We may have had certain spiritual beliefs. Now we begin to have a spiritual experience. The feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will often come strongly.

We feel we are on a broad highway walking hand in hand with the spirit of the universe. Boy, if that isn't something for a guy who was so isolated that u he didn't even believe he was around. And what an amazing twist of events.

And I remember that sense and and um and you know people always talk about what they feel or don't feel or this or that relief or whatever it was. It's amazing to me what I felt was nothing and it had been a long time since I felt nothing. I felt empty and at peace.

It had been a long time since I felt empty and at peace. But most of all, and it just amazes me to this day, most of all I felt as though I belonged. felt as though I was a real honest to goodness human being doing the best he could do with what he had.

And that to me is the freedom. You know, I'm going to briefly run through what it says in the book here, okay? And then go back and talk talk at some length about six and seven.

Says, "Returning home, we find a place where we can be quiet for an hour, carefully reviewing what we have done. We thank God from the bottom of our heart that we know him better. Taking this book down from our shelf, we turn to the page which contains the 12 steps.

Carefully reading the first five proposals, we ask if we have omitted anything. I always ask at the end of the fifth step, is there anything that you haven't told me that you think about? Well, and it's always something is minor.

Like when I was 3 years old, my sister put a dress on me. And since then I'm afraid that I am destined to uh dance someplace in a dress. And uh but it's not a big thing.

I hardly think about it at all. Something like that, you know. And um I have to tell you this, this is this isn't very delicate.

And I apologize um beforehand, but I sponsored a guy one time who couldn't talk. Now he had the capacity to talk. He just couldn't make words come out.

and he he would and his eyes would bulge, you know, and he looked like a fish is what he looked like. And um and so if if the phone rang and nobody said anything and there was no heavy breathing, I assumed it was him. So I just talked to him, you know, and then I put the phone down, do something, go back, talk some more.

And uh and finally I'd say, "Well, I got to run now, Bobby. Goodbye." And he'd say, that would be it. That would be our conversation.

And and so he finally began to be able to talk to me a little bit. and he said to me, "Would you hear my fifth step?" And I thought, "Oh my god, I'm gonna have to take a week's vacation." So, I invited him, this was I live up in in in Maryland. I invited him over to my house, you know.

So, I figured I figured I'm going to put him at ease. Now, here's a very serious, very anxious, nervous guy. And I figured, man, I got to put this guy at ease, you know.

So, I said, Bobby, I said, you know, a lot of times it's useful to go to the sex stuff first because that's what we're often most ashamed of. And I said, "So why don't we do that first and then we'll go back to the other." And I find the sex stuff though we're most ashamed. It's probably the least important.

You know, it's harder to uncover the selfishness, self-centerness in other areas of our lives. Um, I said, "So, let's get to that." I said, "So, why don't we start off with a part about the goat and the midget?" You know, I'm trying to be funny. And he looked at me and he said, "How'd you know about the goat and the midget?" And I thought, "Oh my god, I just put my head in my hand when I looked at him.

He had a big smile on his face. He said, "I got you." Carefully reading the first five proposals, we ask if we have admitted anything, for we are building an arch through which we shall walk a free man at last. Is our work solid so far?

Are the stones properly in place? Have we skimped on the cement put into the foundation? Have we tried to make mortar without sand?

Okay. Questions we ask ourselves. Again, this isn't perfection.

You know, I work with guys who are hard on themselves because they can't remember what they can't remember. I said, think about that. I said, I just want to know what you can remember.

I said, if we want to know what you can't remember, we'll go to to Madam Mitchell down the street and have her look into a crystal ball and she can tell you what you can't remember. All you need, you're only responsible for what you can remember. And when those memory bubbles come, remember those?

Be walking down the street, minding my own business, and I'd remember it. I go, "Oh, how could I have done that? What?

What was I thinking?" You know, I was thinking about the next drink. That's what I was thinking. And so, I'd call my sponsor, called Ed, and say, "Yes, I just remembered one." He said, "Well, good.

I like to hear it. I like yours." And But often you'll be sitting in a meeting and somebody will tell an experience and remember it just pop it pops there you know and um said if we can answer to our satisfaction uh we look at step six we have emphasized willingness as being indispensable. We are now ready to let God remove from us all the things which have been uh which we have admitted are objectionable.

Can we now take them all everyone? If we still cling to something we will not let go. We ask God to help us be uh willing.

Now, you know, in the one of the reasons I like the 12 and 12 in in addition to the big book is that Bill had a longer and other people in the fellowship had a longer view of this process. U my sponsor used to say that you know Bill was over 15 years when he wrote the uh the 12 and 12. People say he wrote it alone.

Um I have lunch um uh it's a I started a bunch a little thing in Wilmington and we call it old uh gas excretion group um uh and uh with the old farts is what we call it and um and we meet for dinner once a month and uh we do it cuz I love being around the old-timers and um and Lib S moved to Wilmington lives with us and Lib just celebrated 54 years and Lib worked in New York when Bill was writing this and she said that He never did anything alone. She said he would write a page and he would come in and they'd all have to sit around the office and they would discuss it and he'd make notes and they'd say, "Yeah, that's right or that's wrong or we don't agree or we do agree and this and that." So, so he didn't write it alone. He wrote it in collaboration with other alcoholics.

But but but Sandy used to say to me, you know, he he was sober 15 years. If he didn't learn anything in 12 years, then he was wasting his time. And so what they are are additional insights into the process.

And that's one of the reasons I really like liked the 12 and 12 because he had additional insights into the process. In a big book, it's pretty cut and dry. You know, you take the book down from the shelf, you go away for an hour, you look at the proposals, have I all this stuff.

The 12 and 12, he said this is a step that separates the men from the voice. I mean, you could just hear the desperation and and and I think that that what the steps is the six step effectively does is it really does begin this process of separating the men from the boys, the girls from the the women. Uh okay, it really does because it shows us how difficult it is to change.

I I love uh one thing that u that father Joe M talks about is he said if you think change is easy he said if you're used to carrying your wallet in your left pocket try carrying it in your right pocket you'll invariably put it in your left pocket and go oh that's right you move it to your right pocket I I love uh one thing that u that father Joe M talks about is he said if you think change is easy he said if you're used to carrying your wallet in your left pocket try carrying it in your right pocket you'll invariably put it in your left pocket and go oh that's Right. You move it to your right pocket. And that's what I do with character defect.

Oh, that's right. I'm not supposed to do that. I better put it back.

You know, um, uh, you know, I was a guy who took staplers. You know, I never got paid what I was worth. I don't know if anybody else is.

I had talents that the people I worked for never understood. They never saw. It amazed me.

I told them about them, but even after I brought it to their attention, they didn't see it. So, I did what any normal person would do. I stole from them.

And and my favorite thing was staplers. Now, you know, if you work a lot, you might wear out one stapler in a lifetime. I've got 10 staplers.

Nine of them never used. And um I'd take a stapler that would show them. And um and and and and then, you know, and I was sober and I'm packing up my desk.

It's a place where where they gave me an education. They they they put up with my drunkenness. they they put up with my early sobriety and I find myself taking their stapler.

And I said, "Oh, that's right. I don't take staplers anymore." And I had to take it out and put it back. Now, it' have been a lot easier if it never occurred to me to take the stapler, you know, but I wasn't yet there.

See, and that's what the sixth step is. Six step is a process where I do it the old way and then stop myself and say, "I don't do it that way anymore. Uh they don't owe me.

I owe them. I owe them a debt of gratitude I could never pay. I love what they did for me.

I didn't know, but the chairman of my department at that time was sober 10 years. I never knew. He went to meetings someplace out in Virginia.

I never saw him. I never knew that stuff. He never told me.

I never thought to ask. Two or three other members of the U were were alcoholic. The I I was sober 3 months.

I think this is worth saying too. I was sober 3 months and I began to wonder, you know, 3 months is a dangerous time. We didn't have chips where I got sober.

They were invent they really started in North Carolina. Uh but I they didn't have them in the Washington DC area. So I didn't have a red chip.

But I love the idea of the red chip being dangerous because at 3 months I began to reconsider my position. I began to say things like well maybe I'm really not an alcoholic. I mean they're just a bunch of unprofessionals.

I mean I'm running around a white coat, right? Not the kind that wraps around. I mean this is the kind that uh you know had my name and everything on them.

And uh and so I'm thinking I mean I'm getting pretty cool again and pretty smart. And I'm thinking maybe I was a bit precipitous with this lifetime business. And so I there was a psychiatrist there.

I said, "Well, I'm going to go check it out with Bill." Now, Bill had a free clinic down on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. And and I would go with him to do genetic testing. That's what I did in those days.

And we'd talk on the way down and back and stuff. And he'd always thank me for my time and and he was a real nice guy. And I knew that he would see me and probably wouldn't charge me.

That was real important, too. And so so I stopped by to see Bill and uh and I told Bill I said, "You got a few minutes I need to talk." He said, "Of course, come in." So I sat down and and I told him, I said, "You know, 3 months ago," I said, "I went into treatment for alcoholism." And I said, and I went on to tell him. He said, "Well, what about AA?" I said, "Well, I go 10 times a week." He said, "Well, that's good.

That's really good." And I said, "But I said, ' Do you think I'm doing the right thing?" And he said, "Well, do you want to kill yourself?" And I said, "No." And he said, "Are you able to get to work?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "You couldn't do that before?" I said, "No, I couldn't." So, he went on, he began to point out some subtle changes that had taken place in my life. And then he I said to him, "Do you think that I ought to keep doing this?" And he said, "Well, it seems to be working better than what you were doing before." And I couldn't argue that. So, he confirmed it and I left.

Did you know the man I chose to go see was a non-alcoholic member of the board of alcoholics and nuts? Now, does God take care of me or does God take care of me? I sober seven or eight years and I'm down in in New Orleans and there he is.

Bill, what are you doing here? He said and every year I go back, you know, on my my anniversary and we have a cup of coffee and laugh about the fact I was thinking about resigning when I was so over 90 days. So, so it's very very important I think that that that we see this this process and this change that happens.

And at the sixth step is a process where I do it wrong. You know, the old idea I had was if I just knew what was wrong, I wouldn't do it anymore because I'm that kind of guy. I mean, I'm a good guy.

So, if I know it's wrong, I won't do it. My problem is I just really don't know it's wrong. Well, that fell apart in the sixth step because I had done it in the fifth step and I'd asked, you know, and and I'd seen it and I knew it was wrong and I did it anyway.

So, now I had to come up with a reason for why it was wrong for you and it's all right for me, you know. And there in lies the trouble with the sixth step of course. So I think the sixth step is a process.

It really does separate the men from the voice. It really is. Do you want to start living your life based upon spiritual principles or do you want to live your life based upon what you think you need and deserve?

And you know I'm always reminded of my timistic background. Aquinus talked about the five ways and and what Aquinus said that we need to do. Thomas Aquinus said we need to do we need to do what's most kind, most noble and most loving.

And so I had to stop doing what would as Bill Wilson would say just enough to get me by. You know, Bill Wilson's sponsor was after Ebie was the man he called a sponsor was a a Jesuit priest from St. Louis, Father Ed.

and Ed was Thomas toist and Edward and so Bill Wilson's writings particularly in the 12th and 12th are riddled with with ideas from Thomas Aquinus in the 12th century 13th century and uh but but I need to look not at what I need to do to get by but what's the best way to do it what's the most noble way to do it what's the most loving way to do it and that's what the sixth step is is a process now when I hear a guy's fifth step I have him do the sixth and seventh step immediately If I'm sponsoring them, okay, we live in a sixth and seventh step for a while. I have him read a six step one day and a 12 and 12 and a seven step the next day and a 12 and 12. Like I say, I like the 12 and 12.

My sponsor had me read the third step every day for 30 days. And I said, why should I do that? He said, well, if you do that, there'll be a miracle.

I said, what's a miracle? He said, I'm not going to tell you. You have to do it.

So, so I went back and after 30 days, I said, I did it, Sandy. I read read the 12 and 12, the third step every day for 30 days. He said, "Well," he said, "If you've done that, then there's a miracle." I said, "What's the miracle?" He said, "Well, if you've truly made a decision to turn your will in life over the care of God, the miracle is your will in life is no longer a handsome idiot.

That's the miracle." And um and so the six and seven step uh I haven't read the sixth step one day, the seventh step another next day. And what happens is this desire we have to do it properly uh is always thwarted by some self-interest sense why it's okay for me to do and it's not okay for you to do and that sort of things there's a tremendous sense of self-interest that and I need to see that and I come to conclude after a while that you're not the reason I'm the way I am. I'm the reason that I'm the way I am.

It's not because I was raised in poverty. It's because I grew up. That's the problem.

Because I was born, that's the problem. And I come to fully accept that my character defects weren't things that were inflicted upon me. Okay?

They were things that I developed myself out of selfishness and self-centerness. Okay? Why don't we take a break?

One of the things that it says at the beginning of u of of uh the fifth step is that all 12 steps are contrary to to um to our na to our natures. Okay. Uh the way it says is that all of AA's 12 steps ask us to go contrary to our natural desires.

They all deflate our egos. And that's what it's designed to do. Um there there are trends around and ideas old ideas tend to recirculate not only in my head but um but they recirculate um all around us and and one of the ideas I hear being talked about a lot now and and these these things have ways of making it into Alcoholics Anonymous.

One of the ideas is that what we have to do is develop a healthy ego. I really like that u a healthy ego. It's like I made a mistake one time of talking to my sponsor and I said that awful word uh false pride and my sponsor said, "Oh, you're into true pride." And I, you know, whenever you start like that, I knew it was going to go badly, you know, and um and I said, "Well, yes." I said, I said, "There's good pride." And he said, "Well, give me an instance." I said, "Well," he said, I said, "I'm proud to be sober." He said, "Well, you had a lot to do with that." He said, "Uh, when you were in He said, 'You were in charge.

You were crapping your pants in public." I said, "Well, yeah, yeah." I said, I said, "So, what I guess I am is I'm grateful to be sober." He said, "Yeah, yeah, that's that's probably it." And I said, "Well, you know, you can't give up with your sponsor. I mean, you can't lay down and, you know, they'll run all over you." So, so I said to him, "Well," I said, "I I'm proud of how my children are turning out." He said, "Well, that's something." He said, "You aren't even allowed to see them." And uh they're turning out well. He said, "It probably has a lot to do with the fact that your wife's a good mother.

Your your ex-wife's a good mother." And I said, "Well, okay. Okay. I'm grateful they're turning out well, but you can't give up.

I mean, you just can't." And the minute it was out of my mouth, I knew it was a mistake. I said, "Well, I'm proud to be an American." And uh he said, "Oh my god." He said, "You had less to do with that anything." He said he said hadn't been a potato fam and you wouldn't even be an American. So um I think what he says is true.

So what I am is grateful. But this thought really is is that what we need to do is that we have to get a self a healthy ego. Now that that may be fine for a non-alcoholic.

I mean they can play around with that stuff. You know it's like a guy without the shakes can probably play with nitroglycerin but if you got the shakes we wouldn't recommend it. Okay.

and and uh um in this whole business and Harry Tibo is a friend of of the fellowship and you know uh Bill Wilson often referred to Harry Tibo when he talked about our friends in psychiatry and Harry Tibo wrote some things and one of the things he wrote uh was something called the ego factors and the surrender to alcoholism and it's a classic piece of work I I if you if you are interested in this area it's well worth reading and in essence what Tibo Dr. Tibo said was if the alcoholic tries to get rid of all their ego and the experts argue with us that if you get rid of all your ego you can't exist. Okay.

But Tibo says if you try with the help of God to get rid of all your ego you might get rid of enough of it to live. Okay. So it's not a problem for us ever having too little ego.

Okay. That's probably not going to happen you know. So so don't worry too much about it.

The other thing I like to u to talk about is is is how this process happens to us. Um I'm going to just step aside from the the steps just for a minute just to talk about how this whole process of getting well works for us. You know it's not a linear phenomenon.

You ever you ever have those days when you say to yourself, I haven't changed a bit. This isn't working for me. you know, and of course that's not based on anything other than how we feel at the time.

Um I I used to uh I used to uh call my ex-wife up to get her to affirm me. Uh and um so we'd talk for a little while and and we get always get into an argument because I'd ask her who she was seeing and she'd ask me who I'm seeing and and whoever would ask it, the other had a pan answer. That's none of your business.

That hasn't been your s business since you left me. That hasn't been your business since you threw me out. And uh and so she'd say, "You haven't changed a fit." I hang up the phone.

I go, "Oh no." You know, so I called my sponsor one time. So I was talking to my ex-wife and she said, "I haven't changed a bit." And he said, "Let me make a suggestion to you." He said, "If you want to know how you're doing, he said, "Call me. Don't call your ex-wife or her lawyer." He said, "This is hard for you to believe, but they're not in this for you, Keith." Yeah.

So this whole business about how we, you know, how we're doing or how we feel we're doing and everything. You know, my background in biology u is helpful in this. If you take if you take um an amoeba or something and you put it on an augur plate, you know, amiebas grow on augur plates and uh and and they begin to reproduce.

They'll grow like crazy. It's called an S curve. Okay?

It's just like this. They they grow like crazy. Okay?

And then there's an amoeba for every square centimeter of augur. So they stop growing and what they have to do is one has to die for another one to be born, you know. So they level off.

Well, if you take and pour in a a bunch of new media into a bigger plate, they take off again. And that's the way I think it is for me in Alcoholics Anonymous. Something will happen.

Bill would say that pain is a touchstone of all growth, of all spiritual growth. and I'll grow like crazy because I'm a painful situation arises or I'm in it or something like that and I, you know, I have to rely on God. I have to do the things that I need to do and I do the steps or whatever, whatever is indicated and I grow like crazy and then I level off and if I level off for a while, it feels like it felt down here.

So, I want to say I haven't changed a bit. I'm the same. Well, of course I changed.

Used to be there, now I'm I'm here now. After a while, I get bored and pain comes along and and pain really is our friend. I mean, it really is our friend.

Uh my mother taught me that as she died of cancer that pain is is truly I always knew it theoretically that pain is truly our friend. And um um I spent my whole life trying to avoid pain. I was an epicurian.

Epicurus was a philosopher who believed in what you called the the principle of of uh of joy and happiness and and never wanted any pain. the the whole object of life is to avoid pain and and uh um he's dead now. Um been dead for thousands of years.

But uh but u I don't believe that that's possible. Not if we're going to live in the real world. Not if we're going to be of service to God and to our fellows.

And to avoid pain or to miss pain is to miss the best part. Uh you know, Bill Wilson was sober about 5 years when u he met brother Dalling. And brother Dalling came to see him.

and Bill was living over top of the U clubhouse in New York City and in a book the soul of sponsorship um uh it talks about their meeting and and Bill sober I think it was five or six years and I'm not positive but I think it was that length of time when he met father Ding and Ding had read the big book and was just amazed at the 12 steps it was just like the the uh spiritual exercises of Ignatius Loyola who was a founder of the Jesuits and father Ed was a Jesuit and he loved it. He read the 12 steps and they just made eminent practical sense to him and so he went looking for Bill and um and he found Bill and Bill didn't want to talk to him and and everything but but and and Ding asked him some very obnoxious questions like have you done these 12 things? You know, I wrote those things.

Yeah, you wrote them but have you done them? And um and and and of course and and and then Bill talked to him about the pain and he said, "Will it always hurt? would always be painful.

And Ding just exploded into a smile. He said, "Yes, that's the beauty of it." And I imagine that was not the best news Bill had that day. But but but what he meant was there are some people who called on to always push, always push.

And Bill was one of those driven people that was given a lot to do and a lot to deal with and that sort of thing. And uh and I think that's what made him the leader for us that he was. Wasn't that he he got it all solved.

It was that he was always working on it. And that's a thing to remember. Um I I lived my whole life like someday I'd be finished and I'd be there.

And I didn't know what there was. There might be a house on the golf course. Uh it might be more money than I can spend in a lifetime and a half in case I live longer than I expect to live.

Um you know, I don't know what it there was, but I I was always looking to the destination and and I never considered the journey. And the journey is where we meet God. You know, one of the things that um when I was studying theology that u one of the things that u that that uh I found as a person who always projected um again I don't blame it on this but when you're a kid and you grow up in poverty and you're in uncomfortable circumstances as a family what you you don't talk about how it is.

you always talk about how it's going to be and you learn to dream and and and my mother would read us poetry and and would talk about things that are outside of where we are and uh how it's going to be or how it was and and um and you know we we always grab a hold of these concepts that were different than now and that's where I lived and I lived in in in uh fiction. and I lived, you know, I had a secret place I'd go to and all the things that someone who's having a very difficult time with now had. And I think to a large degree that's why I studied theology.

I uh because I think it was like it was WC Fields was dying in in a room in Philadelphia and somebody they caught in somebody he somebody walked in on him. He's reading the Bible and he tried to hide it and they caught him. They said, "Aha, you know, have you uh have you changed your mind about God?" And he said, "No, I was just looking for loopholes." and um you know and and so I think that that that part of what was wrong with me was my inability to live in and now I I learned in theology that there are two kinds of time.

Okay, there's there's something called chronos which is chronological time. You know right now it's about 20 minutes to 11. Okay, uh that's chronological and you know 5 minutes from now it'll be 15 minutes to 11.

You can rely on it. It's chronological. Okay.

There's another kind of time called chyros, which means God's time. And God's time is always right now. It's always right now.

Um that's why when um if we spend a minute together, you know, in God's time, we spend ever forever together. Um and we can I can only meet God now, you know. I can't meet him in the future.

I can't meet him in the past. I can read about him. I can study about him.

I can study theology about him in the past. I can study what Hegel thought about him and how he and and I always say a prayer for her and she says a prayer for me but I held her and so I miss her but I'm with her forever because I held her in God's time and those are the kinds of concepts that the 12 steps teach us. And it's a different kind of uh a way of looking at life than the way I'd always been trained to look at life.

Go to school, get an education. you get an education, you can do anything. And I thought that when you walked off the stage with a degree in your hand, your life was set, you know, and and all you are is a well-educated, unskilled laborer.

When you walk off, you know, you you you walk off the the the stage with a degree in your hand. I know nothing about life, any of the rest of it. Uh there was always those times when it would be okay.

And what I've learned in Alcoholics Anonymous is that it's got to be okay now. The other thing I wanted to to to to mention oh and and this though to finish with this. So my job is to enjoy the times when there's great spiritual growth and then enjoy the times when there's great peace and level and then enjoy the times when they be again become painful in the next bit of growth that's supposed to take place knowing that God will deliver it.

knowing that God will deliver it. Like to talk about about God's will. Uh I went to uh I went to my sponsor one time and I was just angry.

I I was in a job up to my eyeballs and and everything. I was just angry and I said to him, I said, "I need to know what God's will is in my life." And he said, "In the state of mind you're in now, God's will is not your will." And he said, I said, "Well, how do you know that?" He said, well, he said, God's will isn't frantic and it isn't driven and it isn't forced. And that's what you are now is you're frantic and you're driven and you're forced so it can't be God's will.

So God's will is not your will. And he said, instead of trying to figure out what God's will is, why don't you find out how you can let go of your will? What is it that you want?

What is it that you feel needs to happen in order to make your life work? you know, why don't you give that up? And I thought over the years how many times the mistakes I'd made.

I was sober about about a year and a half and and the old time was right at about 2 years that problem goes away. And um and I decided it was time for me to seek balance. And u and I didn't know how you go about seeking balance.

And I'd had some pretty bad experiences seeking balance in my life. And uh I was sober a short period of time. And uh and uh my I kept I was telling my sponsor about this this nurse who worked at the hospital and how cute she was and about her smile and I'm going on and on and he said, "Why don't you ask her out?" I said, "Oh, I couldn't do that." And he said, "Why?" I said, "Well, I just couldn't." And he said, "Well, I think it's time." He said, "You know, you're legally separated and and everything." And he said, "You'll soon be divorced." He said, "I think it's perfectly fine to take someone to the theater to do something, go to a movie or to dinner." He said, "Why don't you ask?" And and I said, "Well, I don't know if I can do that he said, "Look, I'm tired of hearing about it, so if you don't ask her out, I'm going to break your knee." Okay.

Okay. I'll ask her out. So he he said, "You promise?" And I said, "I promise." He said, "The next time." I said, "I promise." So three times later, right, I see her in a hospital and it was right outside of the department of abstetrics and gynecology.

I don't know if that's important. Freud might think so, but uh but I ran into her and I said, "Hi." Which I thought was clever. And now prior to this, you have to know, now this is a bad word.

It wasn't a bad word then, but I stalked her. Now, you know what that means? You know, I don't mean it.

I followed her around. But what it meant was I'd look at her and see how she looked at me. Then I'd see how she looked at other guys and and on and on, you know, cuz you really have to reduce your chances of being rejected cuz if you're rejected, it proves everything you've always known.

And um so you really have to and so you'd hint around and do all this stuff, you know. And so finally I walked up to her because I'm a new guy and I'm 30 years old. Think about it.

I'm 30 years old. And um and and I walked up to her and I said, "Hi." And I said, "Are you busy Saturday night?" And I wasn't 30 years old. I was 15 again.

And I said, "Oh, you probably are. And even if you weren't, you wouldn't want to go out with me anyway." And I turned around, walked away, you know, and I stopped and I said, "That didn't come out very well." She said, "No kidding." You know, and I said, "Would you like to go out Saturday night?" She said, "I'd love to. Don't say anymore." I said, "All right, that's funny." So, uh um but anyway, another time I was seeking balance and uh and so I asked this girl and I took her this is awful.

There are two things in my big book, my original big book and I'm just just two things that I keep. I never want to forget either of these things. Okay, the first one I met a girl and was in October of 1975.

It's all written there. And u and I and I found out that she wasn't one who had partaken of spirits in the past. So, um, so I took her to the China doll in Chinatown in Washington, DC, and and convinced her that warm saki would be this thing that would set her free.

And, um, and so I'm feeding her this warm saki, assuring her that it's perfectly fine. I can't drink it, you see, cuz I'm a recovering alcoholic, but it's okay for you to drink. And, uh, and, uh, so then the fortune cookies came and my fortune said, "What sobriety conceals, drunkenness reveals." And I thought, "Oh my god." So I I excused myself and I went and I called my sponsor and Dan said, "You're aware you're doing what?" He said, "You take that girl home and get your ass over here." I'm taking her home.

She's pulling out my clothes and everything. Huh? It was just awful.

And I said, "I can't. My sponsors I have to go see him. What are you, gay?" "No, no, no." You know, and uh so take her home.

I go over and see my sponsor. Well, that's an example of self-will. That's when I'm not going to wait for God's will to evolve in my life.

I'm going to make it happen. And the other one uh and I'll talk talk a little bit about it later cuz I like to at these I like to talk about what happens when the tough times come. You know, and tough times come in soiety.

I mean, when we get sober, we live life and life happens to us. And and and it isn't what happens, it's how we deal and how we use what happens. That's what sobriety is.

That's the magic of Alcoholics Anonymous is it teaches me how to live with the very difficult things that happen to everybody. Not just live with them, but to grow through them and to be an example and helpful to others and all that. Cuz ultimately everything we do, the value of it isn't even that it's over.

The value is that we've done it and we can help others. Okay? But I um I I'd had I had made out a list one time.

I don't know, some uh some guy who runs around and screams and hollers and tells you how to live your life and you do these things. See, and you visualize and you do all this stuff. And I was supposed to make a list of all the things I wanted to do with my life.

And one of them was to work internationally. Now, I think about it now, it makes no sense. I don't even like get on airplanes, you know, but I'm going to work internationally, you know.

I mean, you know, I didn't have all the pieces in place, but uh you know, maybe I wanted to take a ship. I don't know. I I uh uh but at any rate I had work internationally.

Well, what became what was called goals became have to if this doesn't happen somehow I failed. Well, I heard about this job was opening up in England. It would take place in Ireland.

It must be God's will because my ancestors are from England and Ireland. So, you know, I mean, makes perfect sense to me. Anybody with a half a grain of spiritual insight at all would recognize that one right away.

Now the fact that there were about 80 million people in this country who had relatives in Ireland and England and only one job never crossed my mind you know but uh so I u put my resume together and I mean it was mostly true you know I mean there are a few exaggerations in there but I mean if if I don't think well of myself who's going to think well of me you know and so I put this lion resume together and uh and I took it to him and I went over to the Watergate where he was staying to interview and interview with the job and everything and uh and I and by the grace of God I never got that job because shortly after that I had I went through an experience I'll share with you later but had I been in England I think I'd have died or had I been in Ireland I would have died and and what's important about that is that's the only job I've ever asked for in Alcoholics Anonymous every other thing I've ever done I've done because somebody asked me to do it that's waiting on God's will and when I make it happen now between jobs I did the things you need to do. I talked to people. I, you know, made inquiries.

I did this. I did that. But I've never done what I was headed toward.

You know, I need to be heading toward it because I need to occupy myself and I need to put myself in that frame of mind. You know, I need to make getting a job a job. But I never got a job I went for.

While I was in the process of doing that, God always sent me something else. And and I don't know how to explain that to you other than the fact that for 26 years it's been true. Now each time one thing ends I have the same sort of anxiety.

You know I know he's going to forget about me. Going to go to the poor house or the wayside. I'm not sure which but one of them.

And uh you know and all that's still there and you know but immediately I can stop it. But but I think it's critical to know. And so they sent me a telegram telling me that the problem that they would they found my resume very interesting.

and so did I. I just, you know, went back from time to time to read it again. Um, but that uh and I they like my experience and things and but that I was too young and uh and I keep that in my big book.

If you ever come to my house and you're welcome anytime, ask them to see my big book and you'll see that telegram that that job and and the fortune cookie taped on the front page from the China doll in 1975 when I was seeking balance using saki. Um, see these are just examples of what happens when I take over. And and the great danger for me is feeling good.

You know, when I feel good, I take over. I mean, I always did, didn't I? I mean, you know, like after the third drink, I wanted to make the drinks because I was feeling good.

And and the same thing is true at life. When I start feeling good, I want to lay out the plan, you know? I want to my mind starts to work and I think all these wonderful things that I really need to do.

Um there was a man whose stories in a big book and um and he called me up one time asked me to talk to him and I went down and see him nice man and uh he told me that um he was leaving this position he wanted me to take it. I said well you know I'm doing something else now and he said you're the only other person who could do this. I'm thinking this is scary and um uh one or both of us is off the edge here and um but what he was going to do is go right.

So, he's always wanted to go right and he's going to go to the Keys to write. Well, I've always wanted to go to the Keys to write, too. And um and I said, "Wow." I said, "You know, you're really lucky." I said, "My sponsor always tells me that he's pretty sure he doesn't know what God's will is for me, but he's pretty sure running off by myself with the keys to write in one of them." And he said, "I don't listen to that stuff anymore." He said, "I've been sober a long time.

I don't need to to go running someplace to get permission." Boy, the flags just went up. Well, you know what happened? And I mean, you know, within 6 months, I 12step this man in a psychiatric hospital and then in a jail and and on and on.

And uh uh it's because he developed what my friend How M calls alcoholism. You know, he was no longer an alcoholic. He'd had a bad habit and that's gone now.

And I always want to keep that in mind when I think that uh that I'm moving on. You know, what I have is alcoholism. It's not alcoholism.

I've had bad habits, believe it or not, I have had a few. One of them, for example, is cigarettes. Now, I have nothing against cigarettes, but uh but I for me it was a bad habit.

And 23 years ago, last month, by the grace of God, I had my last cigarette up until today. That's a habit. That's not a disease.

Alcoholism is a disease. I won't be walking through life one day and find myself smoking a cigarette wondering how it happened. I don't go to meetings four, five, six days a week to keep from smoking.

I don't sit down and share with another God, myself, and another human being the exact nature of my wrong and talk about my behavior smoking. Yeah, you know, I smoked when? Oh my goodness, you did.

I smoked and I went to jail. Oh my goodness. Um, no, no, no, no.

That's a bad habit. Alcoholism is a disease. I'm no longer addicted to nicotine.

I'm still as much an alcoholic today as I was May the 13th, 1973 when I took my last drink. And I'm further along the trail of progression than I was. If I picked up a drink now, it would be as though I drank these 26 and 1/2 years.

Okay, I picked up a cigarette now. It's not like that. It's not like that.

So I never confuse myself. And if the reason I think this is important because there are certain phases in our recovery when we drift away we drift away 18 months is a very dangerous time for me. I was sober 18 months and I had become a responsible employee again.

The university was glad to have me and I was going to prove they were right and I was going to make up for all those things that I had done. Amendments is one thing. you know, living in guilt is something else entirely.

And I was going to make up for all the things I had done wrong. So, I began this process of working like a lunatic. And I'm going to school and I'm studying.

And when I'm not studying, I'm working. And for the first and only time in the 26 plus years that I've been sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, did I drift away from AA? And I didn't mean to.

Let me tell you how it happened. Every morning I was going to go to a meeting that evening. And every evening, I found a reason for that day why I wouldn't go to that meeting.

And the days turned into a week and then the week turned into two weeks and I was at the I was at the hospital Sunday evening and I was working. I was catching up on some of my work and doing some photography, micro photography and things and uh and I looked at the clock and and my home group met at 8:30 on Sunday night and I said I at 7:30 I said I'll leave at 8 and get there in plenty of time. Well 8 came and I well I'll just do this and then I'll do this and I looked and it was 8:30 and I said I missed it again.

Well, I'll go tomorrow. And I finished up at about4 to 9 and and I got in my car to drive home cuz it's too late now. And a gas man had blown up and so they rerouted the traffic and I had to go right by this church where my home group met.

Well, there's never a parking space in front of the church, but there's a parking space right in front of that church. I said, "Oh, what the hell?" So, I stopped sort of upset that the all these this twist of fate had done this to me. and uh and uh and I I went into the church and it's 9:15, right?

The meeting goes from 8:30 to 9:30. There are two speakers, the second speaker speaking. It's 9:15.

9:30 comes, I'm looking at my watch saying, "Doesn't she know that the meeting's only supposed to last an hour?" I'd only been there 15 minutes. And and she said, she said, "In sat down next to a guy who stopped drinking a day after me, and he was doing the same sort of thing, a little bit different. He wasn't wrapped up in work.

He had fallen in love, which happens. and he had fallen in love with a girl who wasn't in AA because after all he says I don't need to confuse my life by dating someone in AA. So he dated someone who wasn't in AA and he was buying her beer and watching her drink it.

I mean, perfectly normal way to live your life. And um and he he also had somebody brought him to that meeting or he wouldn't have been there. And we're sitting side by side in the front row is the only se row and all those judgmental people watch me come in late and go up there.

And then she talked about when she was celebrating three years that night and she was talking about when she was over a year and a half, how she drifted away from Alcoholics Anonymous, how other things became more important and how she drank. And boy, he and I both sat both right. And after the meeting, we took her for coffee and we kept her up till midnight talking.

And uh and and by the grace of God, that's the only time that I've ever been away from Alcoholics Anonymous for any appreciable length of time without meetings. And it was probably 2 weeks. And to me, it was an eternity.

And the reason it was an eternity because it took me to the point where I would have stepped off the abyss. The bulk of the 12step work I do, and I don't understand people who don't have 12step calls. I have as many as I want.

I I set them up. I make sure that that I get 12step work. The bulk of the men I talk to on 12step calls are men who retired from someplace else, moved to Wilmington, which is a lovely place to live.

Mean to go to Alcoholics Anonymous and never quite get around to it. Well, I mean, you have to get the house right and then you have to join the club and then you have to practice your putting and then we have to figure out which church we're going to go to. But I'm going to go to AA.

I really am. And then one day it's 6 months or 3 months or 6 months or a year later and there's no AA and then there's that drink the inevitable drink that comes because we have a disease that's progressive and and uh fatal and uh always have it always have it so I really like to keep all that in mind. I believe meetings are important the regularity of meetings are important you know now meetings aren't the program and I don't go to meetings to feel better.

I invariably do feel better, but I don't go there to feel better. I go to meetings because that's part of the program. I'm expected to be there.

I'm expected to show up and that's where I learn what I need to learn. The um we could talk about one other thing too because I I know that that a constant companion of mine during my alcoholism is this thing called guilt. I don't know if anybody here knows anything about guilt, you know.

My friend Mike W says it well. I I went to him one time and and I've known Mike since I was sober about eight months, eight or nine months and I met Mike and he has truly been my best friend in Alcoholics Anonymous from then until now. I've had some great friends, three or four real real close friends.

But but I said to Mike one time, I said, "Mike, can you tell me anything about guilt?" And Mike started laughing. He said, "Of course I can tell you about guilt." He said when I was three years old says my mother set me on her knee and she read this book to me and at the end of the book they asked the question who killed cockroin and Mike so I thought I don't know but I probably did okay so that's the kind of guilt that that we're talking about is I've heard it described as primordial guilt it it's sort of like guilt that that uh that I come with you know I come with my own load of guilt and uh and it's it it of course it comes from self-centerness and you know it says that I am responsible for things that I can't be responsible ible for I felt guilty about the war in the Middle East. I just felt terrible about that.

I've never been in the Middle East, you know, had nothing to do with that war, but I felt guilty about it. Uh I feel guilty if I eat and somebody else doesn't on and on. I don't see any of that as as as God's hand in any of it.

I mean, I just assume all this stuff, which is insane, of course, you know, you know, and I a few months and and uh went to my uh my home group was Thursday night, like I say, Sunday night. And a Thursday night we had a uh uh a step study meeting and then on Sunday night there was a speaker meeting and and this Thursday night there was a man came to lead uh second step for us and his name was Happy Herald and uh he's a black man, a wonderful man. And um and I couldn't hear anything he said.

I don't know if you've ever had times like this, but I would go places and I was so into myself. I was so self-absorbed that people's mouths were moving, but I wasn't registering anything they were saying. And uh and and and I was just into myself and I was thinking about the kids and I can't see the kids and I'm going on and I've ruined the kids and I've damaged them forever and God who knows one of them might even end up going to Auburn or something.

I mean just you know, you know, I just couldn't let myself off the hook. And u and uh so I was we used to go on Thursdays. We would go to this place.

It's like a Christian bookstore. They served homemade cake and pie and ice cream. It was just delicious and coffee.

So, we'd go there and get, you know, sort of herb teas or coffee or something like that and talk and and Harold was there and he's at another table and I couldn't hear anything and I just decide I was just going to go home and I didn't know what was going to happen to me. But, I mean, I was not in a good state of mind, that's for sure. And I was leaving the place and Harold said to me, he said, "I don't know you." He said, "You got a few minutes?

I'm thinking, well, if I'm going to go and die, you know, there's no rush." So, so I I sat down and um and uh and I he said uh you don't look very happy. I said, "Well," I said, "I'm feel really bad." And he said, "Why?" And I said, "Well, I feel guilty." And I talked about the kids and how I couldn't see them and and uh and on and on and how guilty I felt. And he said, "I no." And he didn't talk to me about my kids, but what he said to me was, "I know all about guilt." And he told me this story.

He said, he said, you know, he said, when my mama was uh dying, she called me from the emer from the intensive care unit. And said, son, will you be here tomorrow morning? I want to see my children before I go home.

And she said, but don't come drinking. She said, Harold, if you're drinking, don't come. And he said, the next day, I showed up to hospital and I was drunk.

And I said, you were? He said, of course I was. He said, I was an alcoholic.

And he said, I didn't know how not to be drunk then. And he said u my brothers and sisters said you know you can't go up and see mama like that. So he called up to talk to his mother and he said mama can I come and see you and she said you drinking son?

And he said yes I am. And she said I can't go into eternity seeing my oldest boy drunk. And he said so while my brothers and sisters said goodbye to my mama.

He said I sat down in the waiting room alone. And he said she died that day. And I said how do you live with that?

How do you live with that? And he smiled the way Harold always smiles. and he said, "You'll discover if you stay with us that the worst you do becomes your greatest gift." And I thought, "Wow." You know, I was just overwhelmed.

I forgot about myself a little while. Went home, had actually had a decent night's sleep. And uh and uh it must have been few months later.

I was in the hospital and and it was Harold and uh and I saw him by the elevator and we laughed and shook hands and talked and this sort of thing and and he left and and I was walking away and a nurse stopped me and she said, "Do you know Mr. B?" And I said, 'You mean happy Harold?' She said, 'You know, he's the finest man we know.' And I said, 'Really?' She said, 'You know, she said, 'Whver we have an old person here who's alone and doesn't have anybody in her dime, we call Harold. And I remembered what he said, the worst you do becomes your greatest gift.

And so that's why if you're kind of new and you've done things that you think you can never be forgiven for, please take heart because one day as a result of these steps, they become your great gift. You know, no one needs us at Alcoholics Anonymous because we've made a million dollars or because we've been successful at life. That's not why they need us.

That's not our value. My value on Alcoholics Anonymous is I broke everything I touched and my life was given back to me. And that's the hope that I carry.

The hope I carry is that I've broken everything I've touched and my life has been given back to me and I lead a happy life today. That's the message, isn't it? That's the message.

It's not what I've done right, it's what I've done wrong. And it's what God's fixed. And not just fixed, he fixed as a result of what I had broken.

And that's the value of it. So, I always want to remember that. And uh and I think it's worth reminding one another that that the great strength and the great power we have in our life isn't what we've done right.

It's what we've done wrong. It's the stuff that's not on the resume. Yeah.

even the true stuff that belongs on a resume. That's not why we're of value. And I never confuse that.

I'm not here because I've done things well. I'm here because I broke everything I touched in the grace of God for whatever reason chose me to be sober. Whatever reason chose me to live.

I was pretty newly sober and I was wallowing in self-pity and I was just angry. Now, I'd like to say something about that. You know, my anger is a form of anger that came out in profanity.

I don't know if anybody can relate to that, but but it seemed as though it had to be profane and it came out of my mouth. And I did it in meetings. So, I'm not proud of this.

It's just reality. And I met I was telling somebody I was telling Maggie yesterday that I met a woman, a very elegant woman, very regal in her carriage and all. And she said to me, she said after a meeting, she said, "Young man, may I ask you a personal question?" I said, "But of course." And she said, "Um, do you eat with the same mouth you talk with?" And and I said, "It's pretty offensive, huh?" She said, "It's terribly offensive." And she said, "I have a feeling you don't need to do that.

You probably have an adequate vocabulary." And from that day till this, I pray that I haven't said anything that's offensive to other people. But but that's the form that my anger and my rage took. It just came out.

And we were doing a uh a bone marrow on a a young woman one time and I never want to forget this. I was sober maybe two months, not long at all. She was a beautiful woman.

She was had red hair and she was just beautiful. And um and she was crying. It was a very painful cut down is a very painful procedure.

And they were taking bone marrow out of her collarbone sternum I guess it's whatever it's called there. they were and I was there just to take the sample and to grow it and to uh do carotyping and genetic testing and things and uh and she was crying and she was looking at me. I was standing there so that she saw me and she said, "You know, it's not fair." She said, "I have this illness." And I'm thinking, you know, it's not fair that I have this illness.

And she said, "Uh, you know, my husband couldn't handle this and he took the children and left." And I'm thinking, you know, my wife couldn't handle me. And she took the children and left. And then she said the key to me, she was crying.

She said, "I'll do anything if I can be well." And she had leukemia. And uh and I spent time with her the next 30 days and she died. And 30 days later, I was so over 3 months.

And you had to wonder about that. I had to wonder about God's value system because I surely would have picked her over me. And the only thing I can conclude is that God must have things for us to do.

Has things for us to do. My brother Terry died of this disease. And I'll tell you about that in my ninth step.

Terry is much nicer than me. Terry's the kind of guy who would collect aluminum cans. He was living on the street.

He would collect aluminum cans and they'd take half the money and give it to somebody who needed it, you know. I mean, he could do things drunk. I couldn't do sober.

And uh I guess God let him do what he needed to do drunk. And he needed me to be sober to do what it is he wanted me to do. But that's the power of this program.

And and I'd like to talk about these things simply because this isn't all mechanical. You know, the steps certainly are actions that we take, but sobriety is an experience. The book says it's an experience.

We don't want to miss it. We don't want to miss. Now, we don't see it well in ourselves, but boy, we can sure see it well in other people.

And we really don't want to miss that. You know, I I did a 12step call about two weeks ago on a young man. He was uh 24 years old and and he got a less than honorable discharge from the army.

and uh he was about $14,000 in debt and his life was over. And I I picked him up and I took him off to I have a bookstore I like to go to and get coffee at Barnes & Nobles and get a cup of coffee and sit down and and talk. And then I took him to the meeting and then after the meeting we went back and had another cup of coffee and talked and and I took him home and I was sitting outside his house and his parents house and he said, you know, he said he said, "My life's just too screwed up.

This won't work for me." And I said to him, I said, "Well, you know, it's your choice certainly." I said, 'You know, Alcoholics in Arms is there and I'll be available to you. You call me, I'll come and get you, do whatever we want to do. He said, I'm hopelessly in debt.

And I said, you know, I was $14,000 in debt 27 years ago. >> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message.

Until next time, have a great day.