Living in the Sunlight of the Spirit: AA Speaker – Paul M. – Bloomington, MN
AA speaker Paul M. from Northern Ireland shares his journey from round-the-clock drinking to recovery through step work and sponsorship in this meeting.
Paul M., originally from Northern Ireland and now speaking in Bloomington, MN, got sober after years of round-the-clock drinking that included seizures and multiple hospitalizations. In this AA speaker meeting, he walks through his journey from bartending in Rockaway Beach to finding freedom through the 12 steps, with particular focus on how step work and sponsorship transformed his life from “living under the shadow of a whiskey bottle” to “living in the sunlight of the spirit.”
This AA speaker discusses his progression from problem drinking in Northern Ireland to bartending in New York while suffering seizures and hospitalizations from alcohol. He explains how he initially resisted the 12 steps but eventually worked through them with a sponsor, particularly focusing on his Fourth Step experience. The recovery speaker emphasizes the importance of sponsorship, service work, and how working the steps allowed him to pursue education and become a father while maintaining sobriety.
Episode Summary
Paul M. brings his sharp Irish wit and hard-earned wisdom to this powerful share about moving from the “shadow of a whiskey bottle” to the “sunlight of the spirit.” Growing up in Northern Ireland during the troubles, Paul describes a culture where “if you didn’t drink, you moved” — everyone drank, and he fit right in until alcohol stopped working and started destroying his life.
His drinking escalated after moving to Rockaway Beach, New York, where he found work as a bartender in what he describes as “a sort of bar you got thrown into rather than out of.” The job enabled his alcoholism perfectly — he could walk behind the bar at six o’clock and the first drink he poured was his own. But the progression was relentless. By his late twenties, Paul was experiencing seizures both coming off alcohol and while drinking, leading to multiple hospitalizations and the kind of round-the-clock drinking that defines end-stage alcoholism.
Paul’s description of his drinking bottom is both harrowing and relatable. He captures the insanity of alcoholism perfectly: making firm commitments never to drink again while strapped to a hospital bed, only to find himself drinking again despite his sincere intentions. “I had nothing between me and the first drink,” he explains. “A thought would become an obsession, an 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.”
When Paul finally made it to AA, he initially resisted the program’s spiritual solutions. Despite being 2½ years without a drink, he was what he calls “crazy off drink” — punching holes in walls and living in emotional turmoil. A fellow member confronted him directly: “You’re dying and you’re dying in AA. You’re like a starving man at a spiritual banquet. There’s all this food on offer and you’re living on bread and water.”
The turning point came when Paul finally committed to working with a sponsor who had been sober since 1961. His description of approaching the Fourth Step is both humorous and instructive — he turned his apartment into what he calls a “spiritual nerve center” with flip charts, magic markers, and four pots of coffee going. His sponsor’s simple explanation resonated: “You tell me you want to have a relationship with God. 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?”
Paul’s experience demonstrates how AA speaker talks on step work and resentment inventory often focus on the practical aspects of spiritual recovery. His sponsor’s guidance helped him understand that resentments, fears, and character defects weren’t just psychological problems — they were spiritual barriers that needed to be removed through the specific actions outlined in the steps.
The transformation didn’t happen overnight, but when Paul finally worked through the steps and began sponsoring others, his life took on new meaning. From a bartender without a high school diploma, he went back to school one class at a time, eventually earning multiple degrees and finding meaningful work with special education children. Most importantly, he became a father at 41, something he calls “the greatest joy in my life.”
Paul’s story beautifully illustrates the difference between not drinking and true sobriety. His 2½ years of white-knuckling it were marked by what he describes as “a long, slow, prolonged internal scream.” Without the steps, he experienced physical sobriety but remained emotionally and spiritually sick. Similar themes appear in Scott P.’s story of when drinking stopped fixing his problems, showing how many alcoholics need more than just abstinence to find peace.
Throughout his share, Paul weaves in powerful observations about AA’s history and purpose. He reflects on the moment when Bill Wilson went looking for Dr. Bob — not because the newcomer called him, but because Bill realized helping another alcoholic might keep him sober. “That’s what Alcoholics Anonymous is,” Paul explains. “It’s pure pragmatism. We keep what worked and we got rid of what didn’t work.”
His Irish storytelling shines through as he describes AA meetings during the troubles in Northern Ireland, where Catholics and Protestants who were “diametrically opposed on every issue except one — our alcoholism” could sit together in recovery. That one shared experience “united us more that night than ever divided us.”
Paul doesn’t sugarcoat recovery or promise that working the program will fix everything that drinking broke. “There’s things I lost through drinking that ain’t coming back,” he acknowledges. But he emphasizes that because of the 12 steps, he can live with his past and show up for life in ways that were impossible while drinking or dry without a program.
His message to newcomers is both welcoming and urgent: get something between yourself and the first drink. Whether it’s meetings (unity), putting away chairs (service), or using the slogans (early recovery), he believes you can put all three parts of AA’s triangle into your life from the very first meeting. The key is action, not understanding: “It’s a doing program. It’s in the doing, and it’s in doing things that you don’t even believe in.”
Paul concludes with the reminder that recovery isn’t about getting your old life back — “I don’t want my life back. It sucked.” Instead, it’s about getting the life your higher power always wanted you to have, complete with the special talents and gifts that were being drowned in alcohol. His journey from a bartender with no future to an educated man, father, and active member of AA demonstrates that no matter how far down the scale you’ve gone, you can come back up through the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Notable Quotes
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.
We don’t do the steps because they’re nice. We do them because they’re necessary for recovery.
How can the sunlight of the spirit come in when you have all this stuff in the way?
I don’t want my life back. It sucked. I had it for 30 years and could do nothing with it.
You come to get, but you stay to give. And it’s in giving that one receives.
Sponsorship
Hitting Bottom
Denial
Fellowship & Meetings
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Full Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
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 to do some service here tonight. My first thought is, is there anybody in Minneapolis that's not here tonight? You go downtown and it's like one guy walking around going, "Where the hell is everybody?" And if he's alcoholic, he'd be like, "Oh, they're all at the party and nobody invited me." 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. We say here, "Oh, you're a good speaker and you're a good speaker," but I run with some people who are non-alcoholics, and they think being a good speaker and being an alcoholic is synonymous, like being the tallest of the seven dwarfs. You know, you've got a lot of cache in here, but it doesn't go too far out there.
Speaking about ego 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. But I told him how much he mattered to me, which is really a step forward for me. As an alcoholic, before I came to AA, I was like the Irish man who loved his wife so much he almost told her. 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?" The good news about it is I answered quickly and in the affirmative. I said, "Yes, I am." Before, it would have been like, "Well, can I get back to you on that?" And if I was Paul McQuade, why do you want to know? On the off chance that I am, 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, tell me more. Hold nothing back." He says, "Yes, I was in a car on a long car ride and my wife and my mother-in-law were in the back seat arguing incessantly, bickering back and forth. I couldn't take it anymore. I always carry some CDs in the glove box, and I reached in and I grabbed one. I stuck it in, and it was you speaking."
Right away, I'm thinking about self-appointed expectations. 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, with whom I'm well pleased.'"
But what he did say was, "I put your CD in, and after about five minutes, I turned around and my wife and mother-in-law were fast asleep in the back of the car." [applause] He goes, "Thanks a lot." I'm like, "Don't mention it." [laughter]
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, may I suggest you send out an email blast to some of the local sleep disorder centers? Do you desire coma-like sleep? Help is on the way. Paul McQuade, guaranteed to bring you from insomnia to narcolepsy in one listening. I can even write the reviews. "This guy is so boring. Even put me to sleep. Signed, the Sandman." I even saw Rip Van Winkle sign one.
Anyway, I'd like to tell you a little bit of how it was and what happened, and I'm here today. 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 saw the blood drain from 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 Ireland. And like Teresa was saying last night with the Irish, we talk pretty quick too. I'm really starting to feel for these guys. This guy's going to be sitting later on with his hands in two buckets of ice.
I went there to do service and now I've got carpal tunnel syndrome. Thanks a lot. But what can I tell you? It's an honor. I'll tell you a little about where I'm from. I'm from Northern Ireland. I grew up just outside the city of Belfast. The sort of neighborhood I came from, if you didn't drink, you moved. Everybody drank. I didn't know anybody that didn't drink.
I just want to welcome you here at Alcoholics Anonymous tonight. If you're new here, 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: 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. If you want to see real insanity in my life, send me out there with no drink and no program.
We need these newcomers. Alcoholism is like a backwater pond. It needs fresh water. If it doesn't get fresh water, it becomes stagnant. And nothing grows in stagnant water. I die, you die, we all die. What's the point?
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—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. That's the turning point in all our lives.
In that seminal spiritual moment when Bill Wilson, with six months of sobriety, went looking for Dr. Bob. 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.
The incredible thing that's almost missed, and I missed it myself, is that when Bill Wilson went talking to Dr. Bob, he didn't say, "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 Alcoholics Anonymous is. It's pure pragmatism. We keep what worked and we got rid of what didn't work. You talk about laboratory tested. People died drunk. They got this thing right because 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 us can come in here on the worst night of our lives, and it is 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 Alcoholics Anonymous did in my life. When everybody was going that way, I 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 that ever worked. I was just watching the Bill Wilson interview upstairs before I came down. I'd heard this before, but he talked about that vision that he had in Towns Hospital. This chain-like one alcoholic helping another alcoholic, one ahead and one behind. And that's what I ask in my tenth 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 because we trudge this road together. We're not sitting in some bar drunk tonight trying to figure out what it's all about. You know those three o'clock in the morning conversations. Am I here? Are you here? Is this all really here?
I know everything I need to know. I found it in Alcoholics 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 when 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.
Alcoholics Anonymous, by its very virtue, helps me 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. [applause]
I 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 Alcoholics Anonymous. If I'm doing it alone, I ain't doing it. I'm doing something, but it ain't it. I need you. And that's what Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob had that time when they first met each other. I'm sure I don't know if the words were actually said, but 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." Alcoholics Anonymous is 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 Alcoholics 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 the very virtue of our sobriety.
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, 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. If ever a country needed Alcoholics Anonymous, believe me, it was Ireland. Even to this day, I was just over there last week and it's still coming along. In Ireland, you don't get too many sightseers. You know what I'm saying? You don't have to ask who the newcomers are. You know who they are. They're usually sitting in the back row with a black eye and a busted lip from being in a street fight. And that's just the women. The guys look even worse.
In 1946, there was no AA in Ireland. There's a guy who got sober in Philadelphia. His name was Connor F. I'm sharing the story to tell you the power of one alcoholic working with another. When all else fails, send in AA because I guarantee you tonight there's somebody drinking themselves to death and 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 I want to welcome Al-Anon here tonight, who are standing around the bed saying, "What should we do and what should we call and who should we call?" My program says call me. I mightn't get chosen, but I've 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 Alcoholics Anonymous. You see the guy sitting on the bed, hunched in, shoulders tense. Terror, frustration, bewilderment, and despair. His very body language screaming off the painting. And the two people from AA leaning in, open, expansive. "Please come with us. Walk this journey with us."
And this is what happened 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 meeting?" and they sent him a startup package.
And bit by bit, like Bill Wilson 10 or 11 years earlier, he ran around, got a lot of closed doors and a lot of whatever, and finally met a woman just like Henrietta Seiberling. Her name was Eva Jennings, a non-alcoholic. And she says, "I know a doctor who works with alcoholics." 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, he'd 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 that, like in my case, you drank against your own will for God's sake. I know that quicksand 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. [applause]
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 AA is alive and well now in Ireland. I have a special place in my heart for AA in Ireland. [applause]
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 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, and it's Alcoholics Anonymous.
I've been at meetings in some of the darkest days of the troubles. Things are peaceful now, but when things were rough, there was one place that people would come together, and it was Alcoholics Anonymous. I remember one time I was home on vacation 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. 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.
I've been living in America for a long time. I got three other guys in the car and you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. 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." So we went to the meeting. And these guys realized the commitment that we had taken under the circumstances. No words were said, but a firm handshake. I laughed.
There's all these kids hanging around, and they got a thing called joy riding where they steal 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 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 united us that night more than ever divided us.
I'm not going to tell you we left the meeting and went skipping down the road singing together. 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 Alcoholics Anonymous.
I never want to—I'll be honest with you. I never took sobriety for granted. But I took AA 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 in times and AA in early history, our very lives hung by a thread. A left turn here or a right turn there and who knows where we would be.
Because 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 cream cheese—another miracle. What is a miracle? A miracle is a complete reversal of the upheaval of the laws of nature. It's in my nature to be drunk right now, and I'm not. How did that happen? Because of me? It happened because of Alcoholics Anonymous.
That first word of the first step—"We." We drink, we stay sober. And this wonderful thing. There's a guy that speaks, guy Tom, and I like what he says. I'll echo those words because they're so true. Personally, and I'll speak in the singular, I'm so glad we talked about the history here. I don't want this thing going down on my watch. I want this thing to be around for a long, long time. [applause]
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 Alcoholics Anonymous came along, and Bill Wilson went to Dr. Bob because, you see, I need you and you need me. When you talk about you, I find out about me.
And the great news of Alcoholics Anonymous is we are not alone anymore. In my own life, I used to get a lot into mental gymnastics when I first came to Alcoholics Anonymous. 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 egg? A few alcoholics got drunk trying to figure that one out.
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 of 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 for 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 Alcoholics Anonymous, 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 something different to everybody. 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 done to me what I did to me, I would 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 it with booze, with people, with places and things. Always looking for an outside fix for an inside job. I had some symbolic victories along the way, but nothing of any permanence. And I drank on and I drank 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.
I grew up in Northern Ireland at the height of the troubles. Had a big chip on my shoulder. Working-ass Catholic on the wrong side of the tracks. Big chip on my shoulder. In fact, I came to AA and a guy says to me, "You know something, Paul? You're a well-balanced guy." And I thought to myself, "Finally, somebody knows what's going on around here." He said, "Yeah, you got a chip on both shoulders." I hated everything. I hated everybody. Could always find the needle in the haystack and sit right on top of it.
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 picture. When I 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 22, 23, my life's falling apart. But I don't want to look in. 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 one night—you know, alcoholics, we're such grandstanders. I come home and I said to my father, "Sit down. I got some bad news for you. 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. [laughter]
I hopped on a plane. You're an alcoholic. Flying on Ireland's national airline. The plane's still going down the runway and already the cabin crew are serving drinks. The plane's at like a 45-degree angle and the cabin crew are like sherpa pushing these drink carts, and everybody's ringing their bell looking for booze. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. You think you're in a pinball machine rather than an airplane.
I washed up in this neighborhood called Rockaway Beach, New York. Now it's amazing how alcoholics—we got that built-in 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.
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 Sterosis 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. This bar had it all. Alcoholics, drug addicts, degenerate gamblers. And that was just the staff, never mind the customers. I'll give you a mental picture and then I'll move on. If you want to see a full set of teeth in this bar, you needed 32 customers. Male and female, every now and again like a glamour girl with three teeth would stumble into the place and upset the whole ecosystem, you know.
But 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—is 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—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, it 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, 27, I'm hitting hospitals. I'm having convulsions, seizures, around-the-clock drunks. And you know the equation. The drunks get longer and the period between them gets shorter.
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 that. I'm making oaths and proclamations. 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. It's one more attempted not drinking followed by one more failure drinking, followed by one more attempted not drinking ad infinitum.
As our book says, I live in that terrible place of around-the-clock drinking. I love that iconic scene in that movie "The Lost Weekend" when Ray Milland 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 spirit here in Alcoholics Anonymous. [applause]
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. 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 minutes feel like hours and the hours feel like days. I feel like I'm sitting in a cell like the Count of Monte Cristo marking them off on the wall. I'm free today because of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm as free as any time I've ever been in my life. [applause]
I'm from Northern Ireland. We sang about freedom. We marched. We fought in the streets for freedom. I wouldn't have known freedom if it jumped up beside me. I'm free tonight. I'm as free tonight as I've been in my life. I'm free from the one guy I could never get free from, which is me. I'm living in 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.
I'm sitting there in that apartment and I'll give you one vignette. I'm trying to come off a drunk. 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 objectivity. 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 been headed for me from day one.
I got to AA 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 at 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.
I'll just give you a little vignette about what alcoholism is. I found it 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 has 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 do. 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 into a 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. [applause]
I'm in this bar drinking one night. I collapse into an alcoholic seizure. I wake up in a hospital where I've been before, in a restraining sheet, strapped down. And they give me some lithium to get me off the ceiling. A couple of days later, there's a person by my bedside who mattered 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 gotten an oath, I would have signed it in blood. Bob D says, "Paul, if 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. An obsession would 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 to 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 eight-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 at the lights saying, "How did this happen again?" And it's the epitaph of the alcoholic: "This time it will be different."
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