Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. We hope to always remain an ad-free podcast, so if you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-onrise.com.

Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. My name is Paul.

I'm an alcoholic. It's good to be here and it's good to be sober and I want to thank the committee for giving me the opportunity and some small part to do service here tonight. And uh my first thought is there is there anybody in Minneapolis that's not here tonight?

You know, you go downtown and it's like one guy walking around going, "Where the hell is everybody?" You know, and if he's alcoholic, he'd be like, "Oh, they're all at the party and nobody invited me." You know, I didn't want to go anyway. You know, I just got a little spiritual postcard here from Bob. The speakers have been wonderful so far.

Don't screw it up. Thank you, Bob. that vote of no confidence and uh it suddenly be know that we say here oh you're a good speaker and you're a good speaker but I run with some people who they're non-alcoholics and they think being a good speaker and alcoholic synonymous is like being the tallest of the seven dwarfs you know kind of have a lot of cache in here but doesn't go too far out there you know and um talking about eagle deflation I called my sponsor Tonight, I always do.

We get into this dog and pony show. He'll say, "Where are you?" I said, "I'm in Minneapolis." "Oh, you went all the way to Minneapolis to talk. How far would you go to listen?

St. Paul, you know, I uh but I told him how much he mattered to me, which is really a step forward for me." an alcoholic synonymous before I came to a I was like the Irish man who loved his wife so much he almost told her you know and speaking about ego deflation I was at a conference there recently and this guy came up to me and he goes are you Paul McQuade and the good news about soy I answered quickly and in the affirmative you know I said Yes, I am. Before it would have been like, well, can I get back to you on that?

You know, and um if I was Paul McUade, why do you want to know? And uh on the off chance that I am, he says, yes. He goes, I just want to tell you, you saved my life.

So, my very shallow, low self-esteem starts to lift and I go, pray tell more, you know, and uh hold nothing back, you know. one. He says, "Yes, I was in a car in a long car ride and my wife and my mother-in-law were in the back seat and they were arguing incessantly like bickering back and forth.

I couldn't take it anymore and I always carry some ACDs in the glove box and I reached in and I grabbed one. I stuck it in and it was you speaking. So, right away I'm tr about self-appointed expectations.

This is what I think he's going to say. I think he's going to say, "Paul, the minute I put your CD in and your melodic voice started to emanate from the speakers, it felt like the car was enveloped in a sense of serenity. A sense of peace and goodwill to all mankind washed over us.

And it felt like the wheels lifted off the road and the car started to float down the road. And then the sunroof opened and a white dove came down and sat on my head. And I heard a voice saying, "This is Paul who I'm well pleased with." But what he did say, he say, "I put your CD in and after about 5 minutes, I turned around and my wife and mother-in-law were fast asleep in the back of the car.

>> >> He goes, "Thanks a lot." You know, I'm like, "Don't mention it." So, just a shout out to the tapers here tonight. If you have trouble moving this CD, which you probably will, even though I pre-ordered 200 just to take the bad luck off it, you know, may I suggest you send out an email blast to some of the local sleep disorder centers, you know? Do you desire comaike sleep?

Help is on the way. Paul McQuade guaranteed to bring you from insomnia to narcolepsy in one listening, you know. And he can I can even WRITE THE REVIEWS.

THIS GUY IS SO BORING. Even put me to sleep. Sign the sand man.

You know, I was just scratching the surface till I heard this guy sign Rip Van Winkle. you know. Anyway, I'd like to tell you a little bit of how it was and what happened to Harers today.

And as I move into the second or third hour of this talk that I'm going to give tonight, I should be able to cover I just seen the blood drain in a newcomer's face over here. I know this may come as a shock to some people, but I'm not from the neighborhood originally. It's about 25 years now since I left my native Cuba.

And uh like Teresa was saying last night with the Irish, we talked pretty quick too. You know, I'm really starting to feel for these guys. This guy be sitting later on with his with his hands in two buckets of ice, you know.

I went there to do service and now I got carpal tunnel syndrome. Thanks a lot. you know, but uh joint flex.

What can I tell you? You know, but uh it's an honor there. I'll tell you a little about, you know, I'm from Northern Ireland.

I grew up just out of city of Belfast. the sort of neighborhood I came from. If you didn't drink, you moved.

You know, everybody drank. You know, I didn't know anybody that didn't drink. And uh I I just want to welcome you here at Alcoholics Anonymous tonight.

If you're new here tonight, there was some people that were new. I want to welcome you to the greatest singular event in my life. I want to tell you what was told to me and what is true in my life that this is the last thing I tried and the first thing that ever worked.

I tried many ways of stopping drinking, but I couldn't stay stopped because I was shackled to self. They talk about insanity for an alcoholic. Oh, you see somebody dancing in the bar.

That's not insanity. I bartended for years. That's just irrational behavior.

I rational drunken behavior. If you want to see real insanity in my life, send me out there with no drink and no program. But you people here tonight and we need these newcomers.

Alcoholic synonym is like a backwater pond. It needs fresh water. If it doesn't get fresh water, becomes stagnant.

And nothing grows in stagnant water. I die, you die, we all die. What's the point?

And I think about what these two men have done here behind me. Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob.

We can trace this moment in time back to that moment in time when Bill Wilson didn't, you know, I don't know where it became in vogue that the newcomer has to call the person with sobriety. Bill Wilson went looking for Dr. Bob because he realized if I can help another alcoholic, I may stay sober myself.

The turning point in all our lives. And in that seinal spiritual moment when Bill Wilson with six months of Brady went looking for Dr. Bob.

And the thing about it was Dr. Bob was an educated guy and he'd been talked to, talked at, preached at, preached over, but this was different. This was somebody talking in his language.

And the incredible thing that's almost missed, and I missed it myself when Bill Wilson went talking to Dr. Bob. He didn't say to Dr.

Bob, "I got six months and you should do this and this and this." He said, "I got six months and this is what I did. And that's what alcoholic synonymous is. It's pure pragmatism.

We keep what worked and we got rid of what didn't work. You talk about labor laboratory tested. People died drunk.

They got this thing right cuz there's not a whole lot of options for alcoholics of our variety. There's jails, institutions, and death. And once you've been to the first few a few times, the third one starts to look like a good option.

But there's a fourth option on the table and it's a pretty good one. It's called sobriety, courtesy of Alcoholics Anonymous, where people like like us can come in here on the worst night of our lives and it is not the grace of God when you walk in here on the one night you need to drink the most and you're given the grace not to drink. And it's so much more than grace because it's mercy.

What is mercy? Real mercy is entering into someone else's chaos. And that's what alcoholic synonymous did in my life when everybody was going that way.

A came this way. And we do together what I can't do alone. As I said, this is the last thing I tried and the first thing ever worked.

And we're here today and our sobriety. I was just watching the the Bill Wilson interview upstairs before I came down. And I'd heard this before, but he talked about that vision that he had in town's hospital.

This chainlike one alcoholic helping another alcoholic, one ahead and one behind. And that's what I ask in my 10th step. How strong is my link in the chain?

Is it strong to the people that went ahead of me? And more importantly, is it strong to the people coming behind me? If someone comes up to me tonight and says, "Paul, can I go to that place?

Can I comprehend the word and know serenity? Can I know peace? Absolutely.

Walk this journey with us cuz we trudge this road together. We're not sitting in some bar drunk tonight trying to figure out what's it all about. You know, you know those 3:00 in the morning conversations.

Am I here? Are you here? Is this all really here?

You know, I know everything I need to know. I found out in Alcoholic Anonymous. My name is Paul and I'm an alcoholic.

That tells me who I am, what I am, where I am, and most importantly, what I need to be doing. And if I know that everything's all right. And when everything when I'm all right, everything around me is all right, too.

Even if it's not. Alcoholic synonymous bad's very virtue. Help me to come to terms with my past so I can live in the present which is the rest of today for the future.

What a program. I came in here just to stop drinking and I got so much more. If you're new here tonight, I want to offer you what was offered to me.

Hope in human form. That's what Alcoholics Anonymous is. >> >> would rather see a sermon than hear one.

People get people sober. God works through people. And the spiritual conduit that he's using here is a fellowship of alcoholic synonymous.

If I'm doing a alone, I ain't doing a I'm doing something, but it ain't a I need you. And that's what Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob that time when they first met each other.

And I'm sure the I don't know if the words were actually said, but it was it was a shot heard around a drunken world because what Bill Wilson was saying to Dr. Bob, he said, "I need you and you need me because I am you and you are me." And like my good friend Liz B always says, "Without you, there is no me." Alcoholic synonymous, this collective thing. We come in here and the thing about it is we come in here, we've seen it from 50 years right down to one day.

And we come in here and it says in one of our books that Alcoholic Anonymous is one of those places where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. One day, a month, a year, 10 years, and we come in here and we throw it all in the middle. And energy, spiritual energy is like electricity.

It flows from positive to negative, not the other way around. And we lift each other up. by their very virtue of our sobriety.

And we all have worth and value here tonight, whether you got 50 years or one day. Because you know what? We're dealing in God's economy here.

And in God's economy, everybody has worth and value. And the coin of the realm of the spiritual currency that we use is experience, strength, and hope. How we drank, how we got sober, and our hope for the new person.

What a concept. What a program. I often tell a story about how Alcoholics Anonymous got started in Ireland.

And it was ever a country that needed Alcoholics Anonymous. Believe me, it was Ireland. Even to this day, I was I was just over there last week and it's still coming along.

Like, uh, hey, in Ireland, you don't get too many sightseers. You know what I'm saying? You know, you don't have to ask who the newcomers are.

You know who they are. They're usually sitting the back row with a a black eye and a busted lip from being in a street fight. And that's just the women.

The guys look even worse, you know. In 1946, there was no way in Ireland. There's a guy got sober.

He was from Ireland. He got sober in Philadelphia. His name was Connor Rev.

I'm sharing the story to tell you the power of one alcoholic working with another. When all else fails, send in aa cuz I guarantee you tonight there's somebody drinking them say I don't have to knock on too many doors tonight. I've never been in this building never in this town before in my life.

But if I leave this auditorium now, I want to knock on too many doors and I'll find somebody drinking themselves to death right now totally oblivious to what's going on in Alcoholics Anonymous and the friends and the family and welcomed Allen on tonight who are standing around the bed saying what should we do and what should we call and who should we call and my program says call me. I mightn't get chosen, but I got to be willing to go because Alcoholics Anonymous knows what to do with the man or the woman on the bed. When all else fails, send in Alcoholics Anonymous.

And that picture of the man on the bed, it sums up the whole spiritual virtues of Alcoholic synonymous. You see the guy sitting on the bed, hunched in, shoulders, terror, frustration, bewilderment, and despair. his very body language screaming off the painting and the two people from Maya leaning in open expansive please come with us walk this journey with us and we said said there in Ireland in 1946 this guy Connor F at two years of sobriety he went home to Ireland on a retirement vacation and he realized there was no AA in Ireland he sent a letter to general service and they said why don't you start a ing and they sent him a startup package and bit like Bill Wilson 10 or 11 years earlier he ran around got a lot of closed doors a lot of whatever and finally met a woman just like Henrietta Sabberling her name was Eva Jennings a non-alcoholic and she says I know a doctor who works with alcoholics and he got talking to this doctor and this doctor says I work with alcoholics and I haven't even heard of AA but I'll tell you what we got a guy down in one of the beds down here.

His name is Richard P. This guy's been detoxed 25 or 30 times. You make any impression on him, I'll give you the full support of this hospital.

Connor F went down to the guy's room and did what I'm going to try to do tonight. Shared experience, strength, and hope. Harry drank.

Harry got sober and the hope for the man in the bed. Richard P. just like Dr.

Bob have been talked to, talked at, preached at, preached over. But this was different. This was somebody eyeball to eyeball.

This was somebody who knew his language. This was the language of the heart. That thing that we have here together where we understand each other.

I might have stood next to you drinking in the bar, but when you say an alcoholic, I know enough. I know you've experienced terror or frustration, bewilderment, despair. I know you put a drink to your lips as the tears roll down your face.

I know, like in my case, you drank against your own will for God's sake. I know that quick sand stretched all around you on many occasions and Richard P realized this guy was talking his language and he got out of his bed and this guy was sometimes getting drunk on the way home from the hospital and he got out of the bed and he left and never took another drink to the day he died in 1973. That's the power of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And those two men started the first meeting in Dublin. And they gathered up about 45 members in the first summer. And check this out.

The first summer, 85% of the home group, the first group got drunk. Could you imagine 85% of your home group getting drunk, but they hung in there and they hunkered down. Some came back, some didn't.

And a is alive and well now in Ireland. I have a special place in my heart. I have a special place in my heart for a in Ireland.

I was over there last week. My brother's got about 16 years. I'm from the north of Ireland outside of Belfast.

And it warms my heart to see what happens in AA in in Northern Ireland. They talk about people who normally don't mix. How about people who never mix but there's one place that they mix in alcoholic synonymous.

I've been at a meetings in some of the darkest days of the troubles. Things are peaceful now but when things are rough and there was one people one place that people would come together and it was alcoholic synonymous. I remember getting I was home on vacation one time and I got asked to speak at a meeting and things were bad.

I mean really bad. And we drove into Belfast and there were burning buses and barricades and we drove across from West Belfast to East Belfast. I'm a Catholic in a Protestant area.

We drove across what's called the Peace Line and like I've been living in America for a long time and I got three other guys in the car and you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife, you know? And but I love aa humor. This one guy says, "Just think of it, Paul.

The last time a Catholic was in this part of Belfast after dark, he was in the trunk of the car, you know. So, we went to the meeting and these guys realized the commitment that we had taken under the circumstances and no words were said, but a firm handshake and I laughed. There's all these kids hanging around and they got a thing called joy riding where the steel cars drag them around then burn them.

And the guy says to the kids, "Hey kids, don't touch that car. These guys are friends of ours." And we went into the meeting. And we left everything out outside the door.

And I sat in a meeting with people that I was probably diametrically opposed to on every issue except one, our alcoholism. And that one issue that was more united us that night than ever divided us. And I'm not going to tell you we left the meeting and went skipping down the road singing come by.

But I felt good knowing they were sober in the world. And I think they felt good knowing we were sober in the world. This is a special place we have here.

The magnificent reality of Alcoholic synonymous. I never want to. I'll be honest with you.

I'll be honest with you. I never took sobriety for granted. But I took a for granted.

Yeah, there's a meeting down there. It's there three nights a week. They should be happy that I'm going.

And then you hang around here and you learn the history and you learn what's going on here and you realize that times and a is early history that our very lives hung by a thread and a left turn here or right turn there and who knows where we would be cuz I believe of all what is a miracle? I know we throw the word miracle around a lot in aa you know I got up this morning had a bagel it was a miracle and a cream cheese another miracle what is a miracle a miracle is a complete reversal of the up or upheaval of the laws of nature it's in my nature to be drunk right now and I'm not now how did that happen because of me it happened because of alcoholic synonymous that first word of the first that we I drink, we stay sober. And this wonderful thing and I there's a guy that speaks, guy Tom, and I like what he says.

He says, and I'll echo those words because they're so true. Personally, and I'll speak in the singular, and I'm so glad we talked about the history was talked about here. I don't want this thing going down on my watch.

I want this thing to be around for a long, long time. As it says in one of our books, since man first crushed grapes, there's been people like us. Couldn't fit in.

Took drink. Couldn't fit in. Ran at life with drink.

Ran away from life with drink. We were society's first outcasts. Nobody knew what to do with us.

Until alcoholic synonymous came along and Bill Wilson went to Dr. Bob because you see I need you and you need me cuz when you talk about you I find out about me and the great news of alcoholics and anonymous is we are not alone anymore you know and um in my own life you know I used to get a lot into a lot of mental gymnastics when I first came to alcoholic synonymous why did I become an alcoholic where did I become an alcoholic when did I become an alcoholic you know the old alcoholic conundrum. What came first, the chicken or the cake?

You know, few alcoholics got drunk trying to figure that one out. You know, I mean, I believe if you sit down, you could probably figure out why you took the first drink, intellectual curiosity, right of passage, peer pressure, but why the compulsive drinking? I sat down with four or five guys my first night drinking.

We whacked up a couple of cases of beer. Why was I the one guy? I know them to this day.

Why was I the one guy that destroyed his life over and over and over again? I don't know. If you're looking the answer to that question, I don't know.

I don't know why I became an alcoholic and those other guys didn't. But I'll tell you, I know why I stopped drinking. I stopped drinking.

And when I came to alcoholic slam as I heard these three words, pitiful, incomprehensible demoralization. There's not a person in this room who drank alcoholically and doesn't know what those words mean. And they mean different to everybody.

I didn't have to ask for a thesis. Could you explain that again? I'm not really getting it.

Pitiful income. For me, it was sitting in an apartment in Rockaway Beach 3,000 miles from my family. Burnt every bridge on numerous occasions, quicksand, as Bill Wilson says, stretched all around me.

If another man had it done to me, would drink to me and I kill them with my bare hands. And it's something when you're sitting as I was at 30 years of age and everything's gone and everybody's gone and you realize like I realized, you know what? I backed the wrong horse.

Because for a long time, alcohol did for me what I couldn't do for myself. Alcohol worked. It worked like a charm for many years.

For whatever reason, I don't know and I don't care anymore. I had a hole in my soul and I tried to fill with booze and people and places and things. Always looking for an outside fix for an inside job.

And it have some symbolic victories along the way, but nothing of any permanence. And I drink on and I drink on. and good people.

If the love of family and friends could get me sober, I would have been sober a long time ago. But it's not. The only thing that worked was another alcoholic.

And I drank on. I drank on. And I grew up in Northern Ireland at the height of the troubles.

Had a big chip on my shoulder. Workingass Catholic in the wrong side of the tracks. Big chip on my shoulder.

In fact, I came to a and a guy says to me, "You know something, Paul, you're a wellbalanced guy." And I thought to myself, "Finally, somebody knows what's going on around here." You know, he said, "Yeah, you got a chip on both shoulders, you know. I hated everything. I hated everybody.

Could always find the needle in the hair stack and sit right on top of it, you know. So, I'm blaming Northern Ireland because my life isn't coming together. I'm the sort of an alcoholic.

I'll just give you a quick like. When I was a started drinking, I'm the sort of guy I was getting my stomach pumped out at 14 and 15 years of age. I'm the sort of guy you might find in your front garden tomorrow morning, 18, 19 years of age.

Good family, good principles, and I drank on and drank on and drank on. By the time I'm 23 or 20, no, 22, 23, my life's falling apart. But I don't want to look in.

I'm a I'm into the blame game. I'm a finger pointer. I want to look out.

So I come home and I'm blaming Northern Ireland. I said to my father, I come home one night, you know, alcoholics, we're such grandstanders, you know. I come home and I said to my father, "Sit down.

I got some bad news for you." I said, "I'm going to America and don't try and talk me out of it." He says, "Talk you out of it. I'll help you pack. When are you going?

On you go, Columbus." Let me give you some fatherly advice. turn left at Greenland. You know, I hopped on only to fly.

You're an alcoholic. Erlingus, Ireland's national airline. The plane's still going down the runway and already the cabin crew serving drinks.

The plane's at like a 45 degree angle and the cabin crew are like sherpers pushing these drinks carts to the and everybody's ringing their bell looking booge. Bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing. You think you're in a pinball machine rather than an airplane, you know.

And I washed up in this neighborhood called Rockaway Beach, New York. Now it's amazing how alcoholics we got that builtin GPS system. You could have blindfolded me and put me in a sack.

I'm going to find a neighborhood that drinks as much if not more than the one I just left. And you talk to old-timers in Rockaway Beach. It's a big Irish American neighborhood.

And they go, "Oh, Rockaway Beach, the Irish Riviera. It should have been called Sterosas by the Sea." They had more alcoholics per square foot. And to make matters worse, I got a job as a bartender.

Now, I'm using the word bar here in the loosest possible context. It was a sort of bar you got thrown into rather than out of. You know, this bar had it all.

Alcoholics, drug addicts, degenerate gamblers, and that was just the staff. That was even the customers. You know, I'll give you a metal picture and then I'll move on.

If you want to see a full set of teeth in this bar, you needed 32 customers. You know what I'm saying? So male and female every now and again like a glamour girl like three teeth would stumble into the place upset the whole ecosystem you know.

Hey baby where have you been? And um but uh water finds its own level and so do alcoholics. There's a lot of crazy drinking in this bar.

And what that helped me to do guys drinking first thing in the morning and the story of my life, I would draw all these imaginary lines in the sand. If I drink in the morning, I was a morning drinker for years. If I ever I the only fact that I could operate in that job, I was in a job where I could walk behind the bar at six o'clock at night and the first drink I poured was mine.

So every line I would drive, every line I would draw in the sand, I would reach it, feel comfortable, and step over it. I think that's called denial for the alcoholic. But alcohol is cunning, baffling, and powerful.

And above all is patient. If you be alcoholic, it'll get you. And it got me but good.

The worst years of my drinking, 27 to 30, were after I made a firm conviction not to drink anymore. The worst years, the time I was 26 or 27, I'm hitting hospitals. I'm having convulsions, seizures, roundthe-clock drunks, and you know the equation.

The drunks get longer and the period between them get shorter. And I reach that point, I'm really trying to stop drinking. I'm doing a lot of things it talks about in chapter three.

I'll stop for this and I'll stop for this and I'm I'm making oaths and proclamations and there wasn't many around but any that were I'm swearing in your life and I'm swearing in mine but I drink again and I drink again and it's one more attempted not drinking followed by one more failure drinking followed by one more attempted not drinking add infin item as our book says I live in that terrible place that roundthe-clock drinking I love that iconic scene in that movie the lost weekend when Ray Milan wakes up and he knows he's got a second bottle and he's panicking for another drink and then he looks up and he sees it in the light fixture and the bottle is casting a shadow across the ceiling. Now, Billy Wilder, the director, wasn't an alcoholic, but he knew about imagery. Living under the shadow of a whiskey bottle.

I lived under the shadow of a whiskey bottle for many years. Not tonight. Not tonight, my friends.

We're living in the sunlight of the spur here and alcoholics anonymous. And I'm sitting there drinking around the clock against my own will, shackled to self by the very biochemistry of this disease. I used to have seizures coming off drink.

Now I'm having them while I'm drinking. I'll give you a little vignette. I try to stop drinking by myself.

I've not drinking's terrible. Believe me, if you're new here tonight, there's a difference between giving up and letting go. Not drinking.

The the minutes feel like hours and the hours feel like days. I feel like I'm sitting in a sale like the count of Monte Cristo marking them off in the wall. I'm free today because of Alcoholic synonymous.

I'm as free as any time I've ever been in my life. I'm from Northern Ireland. We sang about freedom.

We marched. We fought in the streets for freedom. I wouldn't have known freedom who jumped up beside me.

I'm free tonight. I'm as free tonight as been in my life. I'm free from the one guy I could never get free from, which is me.

I'm living the one place I never lived, which is right here, right now. Every time I was going to have a nervous breakdown in AA, it was half an hour from now. It never actually happened, you know.

I was a fearful person and a fearful person will always find something to be afraid of. There's a boogeyman behind every tree and I'm sitting there in that apartment and I'll give you one vignette. I'm trying to come off dream.

I used to come off these drunks and I'd sit there and I'd say to myself, "Okay, Paul, let's try and look at this with some degree of what? Why am I doing this? And here's the best that I could come up with before I came to AA.

Lack of willpower. If I had more willpower, I could have half a dozen drinks and go home like that guy. Lack of discipline.

I was always a rebel bucking the system. And then my ace in the hole was punishment from God. He's headed for me from day one.

I got to A and I found out none of those reasons are true. I drink alcoholically because for a long period of my life, alcohol was a suitable treatment for alcoholism. But you know what?

It stops working and I end up at the jumping off place. I've been the jumping off place twice in my life. Once with drink and once without drink and no program.

Different type of pain, but pain nonetheless. So I I'll just give you a little vignette. I'm in this bar of of what alcoholism is.

I found the hard way. If you're new here tonight, a drinking problem is solved by not drinking. Our book talks about it.

The heavy drinker, a medical reason, a romantic reason, and they stop or moderate. No problem. I know some heavy drinkers.

They can do that. Not us. The evidence is stuck to the ceiling that I shouldn't be drinking and I'll What is insanity?

Bill Wilson says insanity for an alcoholic is not the drinking. It's the rationalization of the first drink while physically sober. I walked in the bar stone cold, physically sober, and told myself it's okay to drink again when it wasn't.

And that's the insanity they're talking about in here. And I I'm in this bar drinking one night. I collapsed an alcoholic seizure.

I woke up in a hospital where I've been before in a restraining sheet strapped down and they give me some liium to get me off the ceiling and a couple of days later there's a person by at my bedside who mattered a life a lot in my life at that time and I wasn't trying to be cinematic but I took her hand and I says I don't know why I can't drink but it's obvious I can't drink and I will never drink Again, if you'd have got an oath, I would have signed it in blood. Bob D says, "Paul, did I put you on a lie detector? You would have passed with flying colors." And I would have because I believed it as much as I believed anything.

But you see, here's the problem. And if you're new here tonight, this is the problem. Before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I had nothing between me and the first drink.

A thought would become an obsession. and obsession become a reality. And once the clock starts ticking on that sequence of events, I have no way of myself of stopping the clock.

Up in this moment in time, I have never beaten an obsession to drink. And I've got into the ring many times. It's like getting into the ring with a heavyweight champion.

My 8-year-old daughter could say, "Daddy, don't get in the ring." But don't get in the ring means don't take a drink. And I don't know how not to take a drink before I came to AA. So, I get back in the ring and I tell myself it'll be different this time.

I'll bob and I'll weave and I'll stay off the ropes, but the result is always the same sooner or later. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but I'm laying flat on my back looking up the lights saying, "How did this happen again?" And it's the epitap of the alcoholic. This time it will be different.

And I I was in that hospital and I left that hospital and if you'd have told me I was going to drink again, I'd have said you're out of your mind. And if you're new here tonight, I implore you to get something between you and the first drink. And maybe you're saying, "Oh, I just got one day.

This all seems very complicated." Believe me, we have a symbol here in Alcoholic Anonymous, an emblem. And there's three parts to it. Unity, service, and recovery.

And I believe you can put all three parts into your life from your very first meeting. Unity. We do together what I can't do alone.

Many meetings make it easy. Few make it hard. Some make it impossible.

I got to be here. Service. Heard a guy Sandy B say one day the has paid great and alcoholic synonym as a servant.

Why? Our book talks about it. I'm shackled to self driven by hundred forms of it.

My holy trinity is me. Me. If you put away one more chair than when you set on congratulations, you're doing service recovery.

Maybe the steps seem like a foreign concept. We got slogans. Live and let live.

Easy does it. One day at a time. They were like the balisters to the steps for me.

So I believe you can put all three parts into your life from your very first meeting. And I'm going to tell you something. And I'm talking here, not in the theoretical.

I'm talking in the pragmatic. You can stay dry on two parts of the triangle. You may even stay dry on one part of the triangle, but if you want to be sober, if you want to experience what's on offer here, it's been my experience.

I had to put all three parts into my life. Hey, alcoholic synonymous is not for people that need it. It's not even people that want it.

is for people to do it. It's a doing program. It's in the doing and it's in doing things that you don't even believe in.

I thought I had to intellectually sign off and everything. Oh, let me see these steps. Okay.

Oh, they make sense. Okay, I'll do that one. Maybe I'll do this one.

Nonsense. Complete nonsense. And the grace of God is you can go through that program merily with your sponsor or you can go through kicking and screaming.

But isn't in the grace of God, the result of the ends the same. A spiritual awakening as a result of these steps. But what is alcoholic synonymous?

If you're new here tonight, people say, "Oh, you're just an arms length away from a drink." I suppose that's true. I'm 12 steps away from a drink, and that's a long, long way from when I first came in here. >> >> But they're not 12 steps up to anything.

They're 12 steps down to a sense of humility. I've seen people drink again alcoholics now I thought would never drink again. And that tells me it's a daily reprieve based upon my spiritual condition.

And what this program allowed me to do was to go from a place of powerlessness. What is it? I'm powerless over alcohol.

I got a body that won't let me drink and a mind that won't let me stop. My life's unmanageable, drunk or sober when I'm running it. And I I like to run it a lot.

This program allowed me to go from a place of powerlessness, not to a place where of power, but where have access to power 24/7 and unlimited supply. Cuz my problems, believe me, I need I'm an alcoholic synonymous because this program helps me do what I couldn't do drunk or sober, and that's live out there in God's world 24 hours a day under his conditions rather than my demands. There's days of sports, spiritual warfare out there, and I better have something between me and the first drink.

And don't get me wrong, I don't do this program perfectly. I stay away from the water walkers and AA. They never had a bad day soy brigade.

That's been not been my experience. Alcoholic synonymous for me is a reality check on how life is going today. This is where the rubber meets the road.

And there's days I'm sober and there's days I don't drink, but I stayed around here long enough to figure out the difference and know what I have to do. So, I encourage you to tell you something. If you're new here tonight, you hear people say, "Oh, I came to AA and I got my life back." I don't want my life back.

It sucked. I'm like, "You want to go right ahead? I had it for 30 years.

I could do nothing with it." You know, are there people in my life today when I was drinking? Absolutely. But things are different today.

Like the story used to be my little daughter going to bed. The world out there which it will can huff and it can puff. But if I stay close to the principles of alcoholic synonymous, my sober house doesn't have to blow down.

And where were we before we came to a we were lost out there in a sea of booze and there was any coordinates of pain and misery and every now and again because we're great starters would wash up on dry land and start to get things going again. But everything was built on sand, no permanence. And the first drink always came along and were washed out with more debris than the last time.

That's not the that's not the way it is today if I stay close to these principles of alcoholic synonymous. So if you're new here, I encourage you to get something between you and the first drink. And for me, as I said there, I come out of that hospital and I'll just sum up the difference between a heavy drinker and alcoholism.

And the insanity of alcoholism, as I said earlier, it's not those crazy things I do when I'm drinking. It's those times when I'm not drinking. and I'm shackled to self and something's not right and I don't know what it is and I can never put my finger on it but something's just not right and I want I'm out there and people are saying to me I'm thinking I'm not drinking and it's a funny type of insanity it's not some Victorian halls of Bedum where you see somebody really crazy in some Thomas Hardy novel and you go there's somebody really it's not that type this long in my case I would go off drink I'm off a week or And it's this long, slow, prolonged internal scream.

And here's what happens to me when I go out there with no drink and no program. About a week goes by, I get this stone in my shoe. I don't know where it comes from, but it's there.

Two weeks go by, I get a knot in my stomach. 3 weeks go by, the top button feels tight all the time. A month goes by, it feels like everybody's on my case.

Even if they're not, put an X in the calendar. I'm drinking again cuz I can't live under those conditions. Now, that's not a drinking problem.

I haven't had drink in my body for 30 days. That's a living sober problem and I need the 12 steps to alleviate that. Nothing else.

And I've tried every other way of experiencing peace and joy and I'll settle. Happiness for me is overrated. I'll settle for peace of mind.

And the only thing that's worked in my life and I would try everything else. Believe me, I remember coming to Alcoholics. I was 2 and 1/2 years old.

Drink, no program. I came into alcoholic synonymous. I didn't owe very much money.

Within two and a half years, I was thousands upon thousands of dollars in debt. And I know why. Today, I was still trying to fill the hole in my soul.

There's not enough stuff out there to fill the hole in my soul. I take a trip to the Caribbean. I feel good for a few days, but I always end up back shackled to self.

I buy a jacket, feel good for half an hour. But the man, the glass, I can't get away from him 24/7. The only thing that's worked in my life is putting those steps.

Now, I'm not saying the steps are the panacea for every problem you're going to have, but they brought me to a point in recovery where I could decide what was my work, what was God's work, and if I needed outside help. But first things first, I had to apply the steps to my life. And I drank again after that, after coming out of that hospital.

And that woman says to me, I got to get away from you before I end up in an asylum. And I say what alcoholics say, "I don't need you. I don't need nobody." And that's why I have a deep affection for Allenon here tonight because that's what we do to people.

We just squeeze and squeeze and squeeze till they're like, "Go in and drink or go in and don't drink, but you must leave my life. That's what we do to people. If you come into my sphere of influence, you're going down.

I'll take you down with me. That's my alcoholism. I'm not proud of that, but that's the truth here tonight.

But I'm here to tell you, as far as you go with drink, you can come back up and then summon an alcoholic synonymous. I'm not going to stand up here like some snake oil salesman in a traveling medicine show and promise you the moon and the stars. There's things I lost through drinking.

They ain't coming back. And there's things you lost through drinking and they're not coming back either. But because of this program, I can live with my past.

Who among us could live with the guilt and the shame and remorse if it wasn't for the 12 steps? I wasn't a sociopath. I knew the bridges I burned.

I knew the damage I did. I didn't have to hire a team of detectives when it came to step four. Trying to figure out who these people are.

Can you help me? I knew who they were. They visited me every night.

Lying there cringing in the dark with the could of the shoulds and the wouldives, broken promises, slam doors, different countries, different continents. Then I realized in alcoholic slam is that every time I ran away from life, I was the guy firing the starting pistol. and a allow me to step up and look at my part in my life.

And if you're new here tonight, you're going to have to do that, too. And I encourage you with the steps of alcoholics now as we give each other those coins to thy own self be true and the truth will set you free. And I'm here to tell you those people that are new here today to stood up.

Nobody can live your life, only you. We need you to live the life that you are meant to have. I believe there's a miracle here with your name on it.

Nobody can take it from you. Nobody can take it for you. Come up and get the life that your higher power always wanted you to have.

And we do that as drinking alcoholics or alcoholics with untreated alcoholism. We're living incognito in our own lives. Nobody can live your life.

You were given the special talents, special gifts. They're yours. You've been drowning them for years and drink.

Step up and get that life and live that life that you're meant to live because nobody else can live that life. only you and we're here together and we need you on this journey. We're in this lifeboat together.

We are survivors from the sinking ship. People who normally don't mix. And do we sail off into the sunset patting each other the back?

No. We circle looking for more survivors. And we help them into the boat.

And it's none of my business who's sitting next to me. But I better be willing to put my hand out and help them. For that I am responsible.

>> >> and I come into alcoholic. I drank again after that. I drank for three more years after that.

Bottoms to bottoms. But I came into alcoholic synonymous. I was 12step by a guy who saved my life in the old South Bronx group and they had a mantra.

We don't give up on anybody. And these guys came and they carried this message. My message might even keep me sober.

They carried this message with one alcoholic working with another. And that's what Dr. Bob said, right?

When he said more in 3 minutes and I've said here in 50 minutes, what he said at the 1950 convention, you take all this away and what do you come down to? You come down to love and service. One alcoholic helping another.

We all know what love is and we all know what service is. and he was the MVP of 12 steppers, 5,000 drunks in 15 years. Nobody can touch those numbers.

So, he knew what he was talking about. Love and service. And that's what those guys did to me.

Busy men took time out of their busy lives to carry this message to me. And they brought me to Alcoholics Anonymous, the greatest singular event in my life. But the only problem was I came in here and it talks about in our book, Contemporary Investigation.

You're looking at it. I looked at these steps and there was people talking the problem and the solution and how to go from the problem to the solution. But as Chuck Chamberlain used to say, you'll eventually hear what you came here to hear and you'll eventually see what you came here to see.

But you have to have eyes to see and ears to hear. And I had neither. And I sat around here.

I looked at those steps. I thought they were very touchy, very feely, very warm and fuzzy. I do these steps, the next thing I'll be wearing flipflops in the winter time.

I'll have like wind chimes hanging up around the house. You know, joining Oprah's book club. Where does it all end?

You know, I'm like Irish stoic stuff everything. Don't tell nobody nothing. Have another drink and you'll be all right.

That was my code of conduct. It might have flew in the bar, but it wasn't flying too far in here. I was sitting in the ruins of alcoholic synonymous rotten with barroom mentality.

Crazy or off drink. That woman that I talked about, we get in an argument one night and I drove back and I put my hand right through the sheetrock wall and she looked at me and she says, "You're crazier off drink than you were on it." And you know what? She was right.

I never punched a hole in the wall drinking and here I'm punching a hole in the wall 2 and 1/2 years off drink. no program in here in the first half of the first step. I believe this.

We don't do the steps because they're nice. We do them because they're necessary for recovery. If I want to get physically and mentally and spiritually and emotionally rehabilitated, I must work this program.

I know of no other way. And I fought this program and I looked at this program and the steps. I looked it from a basically two-dimensional, just words on a page.

I didn't realize that they're not even three-dimensional. They're actually fourth dimension. It talks about, we read it, God, may you find him now.

And that was the one place that had never lived. Right here, right now. I was in the past full of guilt and shame and remorse.

I was in tomorrow full of fear. Every now and again, I'd wander through the present. What's this place?

Let me get the hell out of here. You know, right? And you can fool them at 7:30 at night.

The coffee pot. I've done it. How's it going, Paul?

It's going great. Smiling from the teeth out. But at 2:30 in the morning with the coulds and the shoulds and the wouldives, and another sleepless night, 2 and 1/2 years off drink, you ain't fooling anybody.

And a guy, you know, hear people say, "Oh, watch him. He's a 12step inspector." I'm glad for the 12step inspectors cuz this guy came up to me in a meeting one night. He says, "Paul, you got a minute." And I was keeping at arms length, bit of humor, deflecting everything.

He says, "Paul, you got a minute? You're dying and you're dying in aa. And the sad news is the helps on the wall.

You're like a starving man at a spiritual banquet. There's all this food and offer and you're living on bread and water." He had my number and against my better judgment which is most things that have helped me in AA in fact everything that's helped me in AA has been against my better judgment and I fought this program. I know it's a 12step program.

There's no one trick ponies. I was joking with Doug the other night and uh I had this fourth step built up and built up. I don't know why.

I know. I just like I buttoned every negative thing I heard about the fourth step and uh I fought it and fought it and fought it and I'm 2 and 1/2 years off drink and uh my sponsor like Paul we got to move through this program because he says you've made a decision but you're not backing up. He says do you want God's will in your life?

I said absolutely I want God's will in my life. Who doesn't want God's will in their life for God's sake you know? He said well you got to get rid of the things that are blocking God's will from your life.

Do you know what's blocking God's will from your life? No. Resentments, harms, fears, defects of character, shortcomings.

You tell me you want to have a relationship with him. I believe he wants a relationship with you. But how can the sunlight of the spirit come in when you have all this stuff in the way?

And that made sense to me. That was a metaphor I could get my head around. So, I'm going to do this fourth step.

And I'm finally going to do this fourth step. You see, I'm an alcoholic. I fought this fourth step for so long and then I said to myself, they want me to do a fourth step.

I'm going to do the best fourth step that anybody's ever done in the history of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm going to do a fourth step where they're standing around the coffee pot going, "Did you hear about his fourth step? Was it really that good?

Oh, I heard it was a spiritual masterpiece. that had resentments and harms and things that you're afraid of and things that I'm afraid of and things we're all afraid of. It was a work of art.

I wanted newcomers to come up to you and go, "Excuse me, are you the guy that wrote that fourth step that everyone talks about?" And I'd be like, "Well, yes, I am. And yes, I did." And it really didn't take that long either. So, I set to work and my sponsor told me, "Paul, it's like driving to Florida from New York.

The big book of alcoholics synonymous will tell you exactly how to get there. Clear-cut directions. You cannot get lost.

The 12 and 12, let's think of as a spiritual guide book that will tell you what you might see along the way. I'm thinking to myself, he's sober since 1961. I got like modern defects of character, you know.

I found out the defects I have have been around since the garden, but that's a story for another day. So, I'm an alcoholic. You know, I can complicate a brown paper bag.

So, forget about just a piece of paper and a pen. I'm at home. I turned my apartment into what only can be described as a spiritual nerve center.

I got like flip charts, magic markers, highlighters, four pots of coffee going. There's a guy Scott R said, "You're like a dog running on Lenolium. A lot of activity, but no progress, you know.

I lived in an apartment. I got the phone off the hook and my sponsor shouting up AT THE WINDOW, "HEY, HOW'S THAT FOREP COMING?" I'm like, "Oh, it's coming, man. It's a barn burner, but it's coming." He goes, "Your phone's off the hook.

How am I going to know when it's finished?" Would there be like a puff of white smoke like when you like the new pope? Oh, look. The fourth step has been completed.

And there was rejoicing throughout the land. You know, I'm sitting in the apartment. I lived over looking at the Atlantic Ocean and Rockway Beach.

I have another moment of clarity. I says, "Why am I sitting the apartment? I should be down the boardwalk looking at that special place where the sea meets the sky and drawing inspiration from that." So, I slimmed down the operation and took it down to the boardwalk, you know.

So now I'm sitting the boardwalk with my legal pad, my big blank legal pad. And I'm still into aesthetics. I'm trying to grow the columns really, really straight, you know?

I'm stopping strangers. Excuse me. Do these columns look perpendicular to you?

They're like, "Those are wonderful. Who's your sponsor?" Frank Lloyd, right? You know, and my sponsor catches, he goes, "What do you like, uh, you think you're Charles Dickens?

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." You know, there's no I mean, make there's no one trick ponies. But tell what those steps did for me.

As you move through them, it's then and only then that I was able, you know, when my life took on new meaning, you know, when my life took on new meaning and started to mean something is when I went through the program and I turned around and took another man through the steps. That's when great events came to pass in my life. If I fail to enlarge upon my spiritual life, shame on me.

And I'm going to say something here and it's a bit off off the topic, but I believe somewhere someday I'm going to be asked one question. What did you do with the gift that was given to you? Well, I worked on myself and then I worked on myself some more.

I did some more self-actualization. No. What did you do with the gift that was given to you?

Shame on me if I put it in my back pocket. If you're new here tonight, if you're new here tonight, you come to get, but you stay to give. And it's in giving that one receives.

And I had all these ideas. I first got sober. I remember saying to my sponsor, you know, I I I I think I'm going to go down to India and help Mother Teresa out, you know.

He said, no, no, no. You're going to go to the meeting and you're going to put your hand out, but they're still sick and stubborn alcoholic. And I'm here to tell you, as I said, I came into alcoholics and just wrapped this up.

30 years of age, didn't even have a high school diploma. Was a bartender. I bartended the last 5 years drinking.

I bartended the first 12 years in NA. I was able to take on long-term goals and chip away at them one day at a time. My responses, why don't you go back to school or in your case, why don't you go to school?

I said, 'How can I do that? He goes, how do we do things around here, Paul? One day at a time.

I took a class. I took another class. I got a degree, a second degree, two graduate degrees.

I work with special education children. And it's the greatest joy in my life. I go to these kids' houses, some of them who won't graduate.

I go through my Mickey Mouse problems and realize I get a full knowledge of my condition and what's really important and what's not important. I came into alcoholic synonymous and you know I wanted to be these things a father and a husband and a good worker but I couldn't. But my sponsor was an active alcoholic.

You're not an active alcoholic anymore. You can take on those long-term goals and you can show up for them one day at a time. And one of the great joys, I was 41, 42 years of age and and and was blessed with a daughter who's the greatest joy in my life who I love more than I love life itself.

But I know today if I take one drink, I'll push her to the one side for the second drink. And I know that today. I know the truth about me and alcohol today.

I almost drank myself to death in a lie. And I'm free tonight. even on a plane in New York and come here.

Before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, booze was a common denominator in my life. Every decision I made was divided through drink at least once. I don't care if it was going to here to the wall.

Enough booze to get me there. Enough when I get there, enough to get me back. And when you live your life on those parameters, your life gets smaller and smaller and smaller with less people in it.

But the minute I come into a, it's the opposite. More and more people come into my life. I love Alcoholics Anonymous.

And uh as I said there, I came in here. I'm so glad they didn't have a clipboard at my first meeting because I would have checked the box for not drinking and would have been happy with that and I would have shortch changed myself so much because alcohol is when you mentioned the first half of the first step. I got so much more besides because I got me back, I got you back, and I got him back and it lost a whole lot.

And I would like to end tonight on a few words of a place of my birth. I know them, but I'm always afraid I'm going to like freeze. May the road rise to meet you.

May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face. The rains fall soft upon your fields.

And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand. Thank you so much, guys. >> >> 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.