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

And that's the end of the facts. All the rest of this stuff is my opinion. I'm not an expert on alcoholism and I'm not a spokesman for Alcoholics Anonymous.

I don't speak officially in any way, shape or form. Nobody does in Alcoholics Anonymous. Nobody speaks officially for Alcoholics Anonymous.

There are no popes in AA. There are a few people who are working on it in case the position becomes available, but uh so far there aren't any. That's the wonderful thing about Alcoholics Anonymous is that we get to work this program whoever we get to work it.

Um so it's Sunday morning and I'm the guy in the tie. So here we go. >> >> This is the they always call the the Sunday morning thing the spiritual meeting, but I always think that two or more of us getting together and sharing as a spiritual meeting.

So, they're all spiritual meetings as far as I'm concerned. I um you know, the thing that's terrific about Alcoholics Anonymous is like I said, there's no nothing official. You don't have to do anything in Alcoholics Anonymous.

U I like the way the steps are. The steps talk about this is what we did, not what you have to do. I've often wondered how much how the world would be altered if the Ten Commandments had been put in the past tense like our steps were.

You know, we honored our mother and father. We uh you know, we we didn't kill. You know, that' be terrific, wouldn't it?

Um I was born in Victoria and uh it's nice to be up island again. I I spent my summers in Qualicum as a child and uh and it's nice to be asked back uh to uh to Campbell River. There's something about being asked back, isn't there, for a drunk?

There's also something about Sunday morning without a hangover, you know. God, I mean, I didn't I didn't come to this morning. I woke up, you know, it didn't feel like my mouth was filled with sand, you know, just great.

It's just great. I started getting drunk when I was 14 years old. I started taking drugs when I was 17 years old.

And when I was 18 years old, I declared myself an alcoholic. I said the phrase that only an alcoholic says. I said, "I can control my drinking." Social drinkers never deal with that concept.

So I started on the great obsession of every abnormal drinker to control and enjoy my drinking. I was 18 years old. And I don't know about you, but I never got control and enjoy in the same room at the same time.

When I was controlling my drinking, I was miserable. When I was enjoying it, it was only wildly out of control. I am a I'm a 3:00 in the morning stark, naked, howling at the moon kind of drunk.

You know, I uh I'm noisy and I get a lot of people into a lot of trouble. Um, by the time I was uh by the time I was 20 years old, I I had gradu I was in university in um in San Francisco. I uh decided I had a talent that the world couldn't live without.

I went to New York and by the time I was 21 years old, I was appearing on Broadway. And uh by the time I was 24 years old, I had done several Broadway shows. I was uh drinking a quart of scotch a day and I had picked up a little non-habit forming marijuana habit and um and I was working the docks.

Doctors, I just love doctors. They're so stupid. I just love them.

You know, one of the first things that I noticed about doctor visits is they don't know how to say goodbye unless they write something for you. And if you give them the if you give them the right information, they'll write what you want. Um, so I had usually two or three doctors on a string.

Um, I never bought drugs in alleys. I thought that was stupid. I I I bought them in drugstores.

And um and I was living in the wonderful world of chemistry. And uh um in my late 20s, I uh by the time I was in my I I started my mid20s, I started I started going to moral superiors to get help. I was my life was starting to get disastrous.

It was looking great on the outside but on the inside it was just becoming a nightmare. So I started going to, you know, psychiatrists and psychologists and counselors and doctors and gurus and all that kind of stuff and lawyers and judges and policemen and um and some of them were really, you know, really knowledgeable and really helpful and wanted to help people like me and they and uh they would say um this is what you should do about your problem. Well, somebody points a finger at me, I bite it off at the knuckle.

Um, and uh my life was getting worse and worse and worse. I uh I met a a terrific uh pre-alanon and uh we got married and started our dance of death and um moved to California, Hollywood and uh in 1974 I uh on April 23rd I crashed and burned and uh uh I was arrested dead drunk with the front of my pants from the waistband to the knee soaked in my own urine in and out of a blackout. And the next day, I took aside somebody I was working with.

Um, she had six years of sobriety. Her name was Suzanne, and she was having a hell of a good time. And she was an AA.

And at 11:00 in the morning on April 24th, 1974, I said the last phrase. I said, "I'm an alcoholic." And I got 20 minutes before I go to pieces. And she heard the screaming.

And she dropped everything. And she 12step me. She took me to her place.

She sat me down at her uh dining room table. She had a big book. and she read chapter three, chapter five in the 12 traditions.

And I thought that woman's going to read that entire book to me. And then she um I was not feeling well. I was I was I was unwell that morning.

And uh I had come off a week and a half straight vodka run. You know those ones? And uh she uh told me her story.

Now, my story was just sleazy and embarrassing, but hers was disgusting. And uh and she said uh she explained to me about what Alcoholics Anonymous was, that we were going to go to a meeting that night and what a meeting was about and what it was like. And uh and she looked at me and she said, "Do you believe in God?" And I said, "I suppose so." And she said, "That's good enough." And uh and she took me to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

Now, my spiritual life, I got to tell you about that because uh it's interesting. I went to uh I went to Catholic schools here in Victoria right through grade 12. I was taught how to be a man by men who had given it up.

And I uh I um I went to uh St. Louis College. I was taught by the Christian Brothers of Ireland.

I remember listening to CBC and there was a there was a native guy talking about residential schools. He was talking about all the abuse that was going on. I was going, "Wait a minute.

He must have gone to the same school I went to." You know, this Catholic schools are really swell. And um I was an ultra boy and I learned the math and Latin and all that kind of stuff. And uh and you know, I you know, the the the problem with me is that I can't hear.

I can't hear. Right. You know, you tell me something, but I don't hear what you tell me.

Exactly. And and what I got out of that experience was God was this big old bearded dude with a real bad temper who had a big book who was writing down everything, not only everything I did, but everything I thought of doing. And because of that, I was going to be condemned to eternal flames with my flesh being flayed off by whips that devils were flicking around.

and uh but he loved me and I don't know I had a little trouble with that concept you know I just I didn't get it and uh uh so I just kind of gave up on that religion I kind of gave up on religion altogether and uh by the time I arrived in Alcoholics Anonymous my spiritual life consisted of those two alcoholic prayers the first one is dear God get me out of this and I'll never do it again and the second alcoholic prayer is. And that was my entire spiritual life. I mean, that was it.

So, when she said, "Do you believe in God?" It was a it was a it was a a kind of dim concept to me. But, uh um the the thing that she said to me that that got me into Alcoholics Anonymous, it was like it was like a carrot in front of a donkey. She said, uh, you know, if you're willing to stay sober and work the 12 steps, you can make a 180 degree turn as a human being.

Now, I don't know about how you felt when you first got into Alcoholics Anonymous, but by the time I arrived in Alcoholics Anonymous, I hated every square inch of myself. As far as I was concerned, I was a waste of skin. And uh I I the idea of being somebody totally different was dazzling to me and that kind of led me in here.

Uh I went to my first first AA meeting in Hollywood, California. They're big huge meetings. Uh the first meeting I went to was 400 people.

Uh most every meeting that I went to uh were were large speaker meetings. There were four and 500 people. So that first meeting I walked into and I was kind of dressed like I am today.

I had on a blazer and you know and I I I looked I looked fabulous at my first AA meeting. I mean I was really looking good. I uh there were a couple of things that were going on that I had forgotten about and wasn't aware of.

One of them was I had been drinking straight vodka for a week and a half and u it was a rather warm April night so I had a lot of lemon lime cologne on and uh I smelled like a gimlet and uh and then the other thing that was going on was that I had newcomer eyes. Now the only place I've ever seen eyes like that other than a newcomer in AA are on a dog loose on a freeway. I was terrified.

I did not know what you were gonna do. I just, you know, I She had explained it, but I knew there was something else going. You know, you were, oh my god, you were friendly.

You know, it was like being dropped into a shark tank. I've never seen so many teeth coming at me in my life, you know, just Oh, God. Oh.

Oh. And I was not well. I was not feeling well, you know, and uh and and and you'd shake hands with me and you wouldn't let go, you know.

You'd hold my hand and and say weird stuff to me, you know. You get up real close in my face, you know, and it was like being stoned to death with fridge magnets, you know? People say, "Easy does it.

One day at a time. Keep coming back. Think dink think.

I didn't know what the hell you were talking about. It was like coming out of a blackout in Antworp. You know, all these people were talking Belgees to me and all these all these happy Belgians were looking at me and and I had no idea what this language was and and I knew there was going to be a song, you know.

I just knew that. I just knew eventually we'd all stand up and there'd be an AA song. But you know what the weird thing was that first night?

For the first time that I could remember, I felt safe. I felt understood and accepted. And I hadn't felt like that in a very, very long time.

See, I'd gone to all those people who said, "This is what you should do." But this place had a new language. This place had an interesting thing that was going on. Because when up I got up enough guts slowly to tell you what was going on with me, there was somebody who would say, "I know how you feel." As soon as somebody said that to me, I could calm down enough to listen.

And then you said, "I've been through that and this is what I did. Take what you can use." And I could listen to that. Nobody said this is what you should do.

Thank God. Thank God. And so it started to happen for me almost immediately.

I got a sponsor uh very quickly within the first couple of days of sobriety. If you're new, get a sponsor. Like I said, you know, I didn't speak Belge.

I didn't speak AA. I didn't know what you were talking about. I needed somebody to translate it for me.

Somebody to guide me through this sobriety thing because I don't know, you know, it doesn't matter whether you come from Skid Row or Skid Place or Skid Crescent or Skid Avenue. It just absolutely doesn't matter how you get here. The problem is once we get here, we all got the same problem.

And that's how do you stay here? How do you not drink when life has become alien, has become frightening, has become dangerous? How do you how do you how do you get a job sober?

How do you hold a job sober? How do you have a relationship sober? How do you interact with people sober?

How do you act like a responsible human being sober when I had very little experience of doing it? So I had to learn some pretty basic living skills when I arrived with no basis of how to do it. I um you know my my philosophy of life before I got to Alcoholics Anonymous was basically a moving target is harder to hit you know and uh so just keep moving so they can't so they never find out.

I I lived with this kind of constant fear. It had four parts. There was a fear of not getting what I wanted.

There was a fear of losing what I thought I had. There was a fear of being discovered for who I really was. And then there was a fear of being punished for that.

And that's what I lived with. That was the gut. That was what was going on inside of me.

So, you had a lot of work to do to get this sick puppy straightened out. And my sponsor started jamming the 12 steps down my throat. I didn't get to go to any of those meetings where we sat around and discussed the steps or read about them or wrote about them or did any of that stuff.

I took him and uh and he showed me how to do it. I mean, the first step was was was, you know, I could get that. The first step is real easy.

If you're new, here it is. If you have a drink, do you want another one? You may not have it, but do you want it?

I did as soon as I had one. You know, it's funny about the first drink. That first drink thing was a huge concept for me because I thought the first drink was the medicine.

I'm I'm one of those guys that I didn't drink before five o'clock in the afternoon because my father was a drunk and he used to drink in the morning. I had two rules. I never drank before 5:00 in the afternoon and I I always drank from a glass.

That was important, man. That was very important. My father was a drunk and if you drank from wine bottles wrapped in brown paper bags, you were a drunk.

If you poured it into a glass, you were not simple. So, I had my rot gut at 5:00. And uh and you know, so I was really annoyed when I first got sober because some of you drank in the morning.

Some of you drank in the morning and got well in the morning. I'm one of those guys who died all through the day until 5:00, you know, cuz if I had a drink at noon, I was gone, you know? So I I I I I toughed it out and got there at five and five o'clock you get that one and just pound it back.

And that's the medicine. That's the one that you get to go. Maybe I'll have a drink.

Nah. Well, maybe later. No.

Oh, the hell with it. Bam. Bam.

And then I was drunk by 6:30 and I was in a blackout by 8:00 and passed out at 11. You know what a swell life. Um, so the first step was easy for me.

My life was unmanageable. My life was dribbling down my sleeve and uh and I knew that that when I had a drink, I couldn't predict what my behavior would be. I didn't know how long it would take for it to run through.

The second step was a little harder because it started getting dangerously close to that God thing, you know, that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. It was explained to me by my sponsor, thank God, that a room full of AA members was a power greater than me, that a sponsor was a power greater than me, that the big book was a power greater than me, and that they were all powers that were designed to keep me safe enough to open my mind enough to the concept of perhaps a a power far greater than all of us. And then of course came the third and restore me to sanity.

Now I was going to meetings in Hollywood, California and there were some seriously crazy people in there you know and my story was kind of you know my story was kind of lightweight accord you know compared to some of those stories. But I was looking through a an old medical dictionary and uh and I came across a definition of insanity very early in my sobriety that enabled me to take the second step. It was a big long definition and in the middle of it popped a phrase and the phrase was this is a medical diction definition of insanity.

Quote, a seeming inability to learn from one's mistakes. A seeming inability to learn from one's mistakes. Took the second step right there.

That was me. Like I said, you know, I kept slamming into the same brick wall all my life. And the only thing I was concerned with was getting out of the situation.

I never ever examined how I got into the situation. It was all about escape. And so I kept repeating the same stuff over and over and over again.

Then the third step is that I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to over to God as I understand God. I told you how I understood God. So I was a little nervous about that step.

But what it what it was explained to me was that step was a decision step. And the decision was that in that third step, I would make a decision to turn my to to turn my life in a direction toward living according to spiritual principles. It's a little like this.

If I decide to buy a house, I don't suddenly have the key to the front door. If I decide to buy a house, what I do is I either go on the internet or I get a newspaper and I find uh a realtor. And then I I I go out with a realtor.

We look at a bunch of houses and eventually I find a house that I like and I make an offer. offer and there's a counter offer, another offer, and a counter offer, and we eventually agree on a price. And then I go to the bank and I get the I get the loan, and then there's, you know, a title search, and there's all kinds of stuff that goes on.

And eventually, when all that stuff is done, I get the key to the house. Between the decision and the key to the house, there's a whole bunch of steps. And that's what this is.

So the third step is about making this decision to live a life based on spiritual principles. And the first thing of a spiritual principle is to examine who I am. And that's what the fourth step was about is I had to know what I was carrying.

Now, I didn't have baggage. I had cargo, you know, and it needed to be examined because I had been dragging it through my life for 31 years, you know, and so what I needed to do was I needed to stop and look at what I who I was and what I was carrying. And that's what the fourth step was.

Now the problem with doing the four step simply in my mind is that my mind is trained to forget. You know, one of my problems as a as a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous to this day is honest selfdeception. I can convince myself that something that's completely wrong for me is exactly the right thing to do.

Just give me about 45 seconds. Bam. And I'll have it for you.

So, what I needed to do was I needed to share this stuff with another human being because I believe I believe one of the one of the odysseies and one of the things that we desperately need as alcoholics is we desperately need to have at least one person in our lives who knows us completely. I was an alien. I was an unwelcome guest.

I was an outlaw. I was a stranger all my life. There was never anyone who had the complete story.

So I took the whole thing to my sponsor and I laid it all out. I wrote it all out and I shared it with them. And I finally had somebody in my life who knew me from top to bottom.

And I still have a guy in my life. I still have a sponsor. I'm 33 years sober.

I got a sponsor. He's got 40 years of sobriety. his sponsor has 49 years of sobriety.

I am sponsored by a guy who has a sponsor because I think that is critical to us. You know, there's those there's this whole thing, you know, in the big book they talk about you go to, you know, a doctor or or a minister or something like that. Well, in 1935, there weren't a hell of a lot of people who had enough sobriety to be sponsoring anybody and listening to fifth steps, but there are now, you know, and I love the idea of kind of, you know, taking a blind nun up the Amazon and doing my fifth step and then shoot her, you know, and then come back and say, "Hey, I did it." And still nobody knows who the hell I am, you know?

I need to be known. I need to be known. Um, so then we worked on our on our shortcomings and our defects of character.

Oh man. And what I do with that step to this day is I look at what are the opposite of my shortcomings and defects of character. What if they were assets?

What would they look like? What is the complete opposite of those defects? And that's my list of life goals.

That's who I want to be. I want to be the opposite of those things. So that's the stuff that I get to shoot for on a daily basis.

And then came the eighth step where I made a list of all the people that I Oh man. Now luckily I had done a fifth step with my sponsor. So when it came to the eighth step list, he had all the information on who these people were because they had showed up at my fifth step.

And we went over the list and we crossed off some and we added some and we went out and then I went out and did them. And man, I got to tell you, I hate doing amends. I hate it to this day.

I hate it. And I still got to do them to this day. Now, amen.

The amend step is not about apology because if it was about apologizing, hey, you know, if there was an Olympic event for apologizing, I'd be a gold medal winner. I am the world's best apologizer. I can steal $1,000 from you and come back to apologize and you'll give me another grand.

You know, but what the amend step is is that I go to you and say, "Listen, I took a grand from you. Here's the grand back. And I want to make a promise to you that I will not only never do it to you again, but I will never do it to anybody again.

And you can watch me." The amend step is making a commitment to change. And I got to tell you, I've been around here long enough that the guys who go out, the guys who stay in are in AA for a while and then drink again, when you talk to them in depth, you'll find out they didn't finish their ninth step. They didn't clean up their side of the fence, their side of the street.

It's amazing how consistent that is. So, I did all those things and I did them face to face and they were embarrassing. I hated them, but I did them.

And the amazing thing that happened was when I was halfway through, just like the big book says, I started to realize the promises that I would intuitively know how to handle things, that I would feel not better than or less than, but the same as people. And I started to feel part of a community. I started to feel part of this fellowship.

I had actually I I felt like I I had paid my dues, you know. And then what happens after that for me was the 10th, 11th and 12th step. And the 10th step was what I do on a daily basis is I look at my day just before I'm going to sleep and say, "Okay, what did I do today that I approve of?

And what did I do today that I don't approve of? And the stuff that I don't approve of is the stuff that I set out to change the next day or make amends for or do whatever. I'm getting real good at making amends fast.

I remember I was I was going to talk at a convention one time and I I the plane trip was a nightmare. I you know air travel these days is like a freight car with wings you know and uh it was one of those god awful flights and and uh and everybody was testy including myself and uh I was going to be the spiritual speaker at this convention. Yeah.

Right. So as I'm getting off the plane this the uh the flight attendant said thank you for traveling. I said thank you for traveling.

This was the worst experience of my life. What a nightmare. What are you people doing?

And I went up and I got halfway up the gang way and I thought, "Oh man. Oh man." So I turned around and I'm coming back down the gang way. All the passengers are coming off.

They're all looking at me like I'm crazy. And I can see the flight attendant watching me come toward her with her eyes are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And I got up to her and I said, "Hey, listen.

I was way out of line. You were doing the best job you possibly could." and I just uh I apologize for what I said and I want you to know I won't say that to anybody else. She didn't even say anything.

She just kind of stood there with her mouth open and I turned around and walked back out. But I you know I I I over the years I've gotten faster and faster with cleaning up the mess. You know, I just I don't like I don't like that kind of psychic mess in my life anymore.

So, I do the 10th step on a pretty regular basis, on a on a nightly basis, and look at what I'm doing. You know, Chuck C used to talk about the fact that we live our lives in 24-hour compartments. We give up the victories and the failures at the end of each day.

And I try to do that. The 11th step is about prayer and meditation. And uh I'm a child of the 60s, you know.

I know about meditation. You light up a big bong and you listen to satara music. And you know, and for a long while I was I was using meditation for fortuneelling.

You know, I thought if I got real quiet and real spiritual, God would reveal what's coming up. I'd know about next week. But what meditation is is getting quiet enough so that I don't stumble over what is exactly in front of me.

You know what meditation manage when I'm doing it right keeps me where my hands are. You know this is as far as I can go is where my hands are and uh you know we all go through those phases in sobriety. I got real spiritual at one point you know so I got so spiritual I was no earthly good.

I um I was one of those guys who was in imminent danger of being crushed to death by a falling bookshelf of spiritual literature, you know. But what I've done is I've pretty well got it down to a a fairly simple meditation for myself which works and I'll share it with you. It might help you.

It's from the other big book and it's a it's a phrase that I I I try to concentrate on every morning when I do it and and the phrase is be still and know that I am God. And what I do is I sit in a comfortable chair. I don't lie down because that's napping.

That's not meditating. And uh I sit in a comfortable chair and concentrate on that phrase and I break it down word by word and think about it word by word and uh and it's a pretty it's a it's a pretty terrific meditation for me and it takes about five minutes which is about all I can sit still. I don't know about you and u and then I'm off and I find I find that when I don't do it for a couple of days I kind of shift.

I find myself getting to be a real jerk in traffic. Um, I I find myself getting impatient. I find myself getting really bothered by small blonde women in large black SUVs.

You know, I um you know, it just uh it gets crazy. Um, and then the 12th step is a three-part step for me that it's really important for me is that uh having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps and I believe that I have had a spiritual awakening. Now, I was hoping for a spiritual experience.

You know, I was hoping to have the wind blow up my butt or, you know, a a burning bush or something really really big, you know, big deal. You know, my name in light bulbs, you know, one of those kind of experiences. >> Sean, this is God.

>> You know, so far he hasn't left a message on my answering machine. Um what has happened is what they talk about in the big book the spiritual experience the appendix part two that that evolutionary kind of thing getting more and more comfortable with the idea of a power greater than me a power that's working in my life that that the change in my life is being observed by you and understood by you long before I understand it I can see the change in you and uh and because of that I assume there's some change in me. And then I carry this message to to alcoholics, not only not only the practicing ones, but the ones that are sober.

You know, those of us who have been in the program for a long time, you know, I I keep waiting for the uh the destination. You know, I keep waiting for, you know, I I've been to enough meetings. I've I've worked the 12 steps long enough.

I've sponsored enough guys. I've been of service. I've done all that kind of stuff.

Where is the plateau with the lawn chair, you know, where I can just sit back and not have to do this anymore? I don't want to drink. I just don't want to work this hard, you know.

So far, I haven't found it. So far, I have to keep doing this stuff and uh and carry the message. But I um you know the wonderful thing about Alcoholics Anonymous is is is what this fellowship enables a bunch of us guys who are outlaws and strangers and aliens and unwelcome guests is we start to be able to develop a sense of community and it starts in AA where we start interacting with with all kinds of people.

The wondrous thing about Alcoholics Anonymous is there's every class, there's every race, there's everything. I remember I remember I was there was a meeting over in in Horseshoe Bay that I went to one it was a it was a step meeting and we were talking about the third step. We were talking about God and I looked around this room and there were some Native American guys, there was there was a couple of Seikhs, there was some Chinese guys.

There were a bunch of us Irish Catholic guys and uh there there was a black guy. I mean everybody all these people had all these incredible personal concepts of God and I interrelate with people of all kinds and the thing about this thing is is this program is designed not just for these rooms with us but it's designed to take this out. And that's the third step.

To practice these principles in all our affairs. To step out of these rooms into the community. To take these principles into our jobs.

To take it into our communities. To take it into traffic. To take it into our living rooms and our bedrooms and into our lives as as as fathers, as as husbands, as as mates, as partners, as all those things.

And I've gotten involved not only in I've been involved in AA for a long long time, but I've also been involved in community in the in the in the place that I lived. I was uh I I I was for a couple of years I was the uh the president of the Chamber of Commerce in my community. Um I'm active I'm active in that community and and you know, it's it's pretty interesting.

I out out outside of these rooms, I'm known as a guy who doesn't drink. I'm not known as a guy who can't drink. I'm just known as a guy who doesn't drink.

Oh, Sean doesn't drink. And uh and occasionally, you know, you're sitting at a civic dinner and there's a guy sitting next to you who's gone through his fifth glass of wine, you know, and he says, "Man, I wish I could cut back on this." And you get to say, "Yeah, I know how you feel." Well, what do you mean you don't drink? No.

No, I don't drink. Well, did you used to? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Did you drink a lot?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. A whole lot.

Oh, a whole lot. Yeah. Well, you don't drink anymore.

No, no, no. Well, uh, how'd you do that? Well, I I I'm an alcoholic.

I go to Alcoholics Anonymous. Do you want to go tonight? You're an alcoholic?

I mean, that's the great thing is when somebody is surprised that I'm an alcoholic. I love that, you know, because for years, nobody was surprised at that, you know. I've had an extraordinary life in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I would not trade a second of it. This is not a journey. This is not trudging the road of happy destiny.

Let me tell you what this is. This is a fullout adventure. This is great.

This is and like any great adventure, it's got really, really great parts to it and really, really lousy parts to it. There are peaks and there are valleys, but there are wide open plains with big skies. This is a fantastic life.

And for over 33 years, I've been living it, good, bad, and indifferent. And I got to tell you, some days I am a stunning example of Alcoholics Anonymous. Some days I just shimmer with sobriety.

You can introduce me to your grandmother. You know, I'm just fabulous with this sobriety thing, you know. And then there are days when I don't drink, and that's about as good as it gets, you know.

Then there those days when I'd like to check into some nice little psychiatric hospital and take a whole lot of thorazine and make a wallet, you know? God, it just looks like a real good idea to me. I got to tell you, the latest adventure of my life is u in February my divorce was final.

Um, we decided not to wait until the children were dead and uh, so we separated a little over a year or so ago and uh, we had been together for 37 years. We had been married for 35 and it was um, it was real sad. It was sad and it was uh, and nobody gets out of relationship that long without wounds.

Let me tell you, despite the fact that we did it with an enormous amount of dignity and we uh we really worked the program and she talked to her Alanon sponsor a lot and I talked to my AA sponsor a lot and uh we uh we made a commitment not to involve our daughter in it by making her choose sides or do any of that kind of stuff. We don't badmouth each other. We don't do anything else like that.

But uh but it's been a a strange time for me and now I'm uh a newcomer's worst nightmare. You know, I'm old, sober, and alone, you know. And I had to find out about what that alone thing is, you know.

Um because there's a difference between being alone and being lonely. And the way that that I have found to to uh keep that loneliness thing from biting at my butt is to uh is to reinforce that sense of community, is to reinforce my commitment to Alcoholics Anonymous. I sponsor a few more guys than I have before.

I'm a little more active in the in the fellowship. I'm uh and I and I have returned to uh the first love of of my life really, which is the theater. and I'm doing a whole lot of that kind of stuff.

But, uh, so I I had a talk with my sponsor um, and I said, you know, now now that this is all over and I'm living by myself, I said, I I think I think what I want to do is I'm I'm going to become one of those old farts in Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I I'm, you know, one of those mean old guys. You know, they used to when I was new, you know, the ones that used to say, "DON'T ANALYZE, UTILIZE." you know those guys or if you said you know I saw something on TELEVISION THEY SAID OUTSIDE ISSUE REMEMBER THE OUTSIDE ISSUE GUYS OUTSIDE ISSUE THEY USED TO YELL from the back there I'm going to become one of those you know I spilt more in my tie than you drank you know I love those old farts and uh I'm looking around for the opportunity to say to a young mother madam that is the ugliest baby I've ever seen you know and you know I'm really one of those canankers old jerks.

And uh you know, I'm going to be 65 at the end of this month and uh it's time for me to become an old fart in AA. And uh so I explained this to my sponsor and he said, "I want you to date." I said, "You what? You want me to date?" And he said, "Yeah, you need to go out on a date.

You need to you need to do that." I said, "I haven't I haven't dated since 1969." for God's sake, you know, I I don't know anything about dating. You got to get you got to get medical reports and and and legal disclaimers and you know, I mean, it's complicated these days. You know, when I was dating, you look for somebody who would drink until 4:00 in the morning, do unspeakable things, and turn into a pizza.

You know, I don't know anything about this kind of stuff. He said, "Well, you got to do it." Oh, man. I don't he said uh you know so uh I was working on this project and there was this kind of nice lady who was working on it.

She was doing some marketing stuff and kind of age appropriate you know she wasn't in puberty and uh and you know she was in her mid to late 50s and an attractive lady and so I had you know we we were working on this project so I said well you know we had to go over some business stuff and I said well let's grab a bite of lunch. So, we grabbed a bite of lunch and we did talked about business and briefly talked about, you know, she was divorced with a grown daughter and I'm divorced with a grown daughter. I walked her out to the parking lot.

She got in her car. I got in my car and we left and I can call my sponsor. So, um before I could call him, uh two nights later at about 3:00 in the morning, the phone rang and I picked up the phone.

It was her dead drunk. are you interested in me? And I said, you know, not at the moment, you know, just but let's talk about it tomorrow, you know.

Well, luckily, she must have been in a blackout because she didn't remember calling me and I didn't bring it up. And so I called my sponsor and I said, "Hey, I did it." You know, and he said, "That's good." See, my sponsor has Alzheimer's, so I thought he'd forget about it, but he doesn't. And uh so then I got to thinking, you know, you know, which is bad.

You know, I should never think because I thought, you know, you know, what if this had been a real date? And what if this, you know, what if this started getting kind of up close and personal, you know? You know, when I started dating at 14 years old, I started drinking.

I have never been on a date sober. you know, and and and what if it starts getting really kind of, you know, close, you know, and I thought, well, you know, that'll be interesting. I mean, you know, there hasn't been a party in my pants in years.

I don't know, you know, you know, it's a it's kind of like Tasmania. It's down there, but everybody's forgotten about it. Yeah.

And I and I'm thinking, wow, you know what what happens if it gets, you know, well, you know, there's those little blue pills, but I I don't like the side effects of those things, you know, bouncing down the street saying good morning, good morning, you know, lace, you know, or talking in tongues or playing in an old rock and roll band in a garage. I mean, sounds pretty awful to me. you know, and I'm I I I'm an alcoholic, you know, I you know, I mean, I not only have not had a drink, I have had no mindaltering chemicals that affect me from the neck up, you know, for 33 years.

I don't know about mindaltering chemicals that affect you from the waist down. You know, I just cuz, you know, I'm alcoholic. One of those things works, you know.

Woo! You know, wonder what five would do, you know. Yeah.

start in those things. In two weeks, they find me dead in a gutter under my own tent. The funeral would have to be an open casket cuz I couldn't get the lid.

So, uh, so I think I'm just going to be an old fart in AA. That's a, you know, can you hear it? Can you hear the fear?

Can you hear the sadness? Can you hear the embarrassment? Can you hear the uncertainty?

Can you hear it? Because it's there. It's underneath the laughter.

That's what I love about alcoholics and honest. We laugh at the bad stuff and we cry at the good stuff and we call it aa. And if you can hear that, then you're the ones I want to talk to.

You're the ones with the experience who say, "I know how you feel. I've been there. This is what I did, and it's going to work out all right." You're the ones I want to talk to because I come back here all the time to be reassured.

I think the ones that leave Alcoholics Anonymous and get loaded are the ones who refuse to allow themselves to be reassured. And you do that for me all the time. No matter what I'm going through, you tell me it's going to be all right.

That the good stuff will pass, the bad stuff will pass, and we'll all be here and we'll all be okay. Whenever I'm asked to share at a podium in Alcoholics Anonymous, I consider it a report to my teachers because you're the people who have taught me everything that I know. You've taught me everything that I value.

You've taught me everything that is dignified and kind and loving and good about myself. The stuff that's small and mean-spirited is the stuff that I've decided I don't need to learn. So, I keep coming back.

There's a wonderful man in Alcoholics Anonymous named Alan McInness. And Alan McInness wrote us wrote a pamphlet called a member's eye view of Alcoholics Anonymous. If you're new or if you've never read this pamphlet, get it.

It is extraordinary because what he talks about is that in Alcoholics Anonymous, we get to build our own house. We get to build our own spiritual house. Some of us return to the religion of our childhood.

Some of us strike out as I have into other times and places and ideas. And and what what we all have to do in order to stay sober is Carl Yog says is we've all got to find some kind of profound spiritual experience. Sometimes it comes in a rush.

For most of us, it just comes in dribbs and dravels and eventually years later we wake up and we're okay with the idea of a god. So I report to you as my teachers and I want to tell you what I found here and it's something that Alan McInness wrote at the end of this that is really really incredibly important to me. I am not a religious man.

I have never returned to a religion but I do consider myself spiritual. And this piece profoundly touches me. It talks about some Christian concepts.

And if you're new, don't back up on that. Just listen with your heart because I'm going to read this to you from mine. This coming Sunday in the churches of many of us, there will be read that portion of the Gospel of Matthew which recounts the time when John the Baptist was languishing in the prison of Herod.

And hearing of the works of his cousin Jesus, he sent two of his disciples to say to him, "Art thou he who is to come, or shall we look for another?" And Christ did as he so often did. He did not answer them directly, but wanted John to decide for himself. And so he said to the disciples, "Go and report to John what you have heard and what you have seen.

The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise. The poor have the gospel preached to them. Now, back in my childhood catechism days, I was taught that the poor in this instance did not mean only the poor in a material sense, but also meant the poor in spirit.

Those who burned with an inner hunger and an inner thirst. and that the word gospel meant quite literally the good news. I have trouble getting through this.

More than 33 years ago, Suzanne maneuvered me into AA. Today, if she were to ask me, "Tell me what did you find?" I would say to her what I say to you now. I can tell you only what I have heard and seen.

It seems the blind do see, the lame do walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise. And over and over again, in the middle of the longest day or the darkest night, the poor in spirit have the good news told to them. God grant that it may always be so.

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