Bill C. at the North Shore Roundup in Vancouver in 2013

(0:00 – 0:25)
Bill Alcoholic! I’d like to thank the committee for inviting me up here, Deborah, and all
the troops, my host Brian. Jesus, you people have nice weather up here, this is a pretty
city. I told my wife, I called her Friday night and I said, you screwed up, you should have
come.
(0:29 – 0:54)
This has been really nice. You know, it always cracks me up when we read the original
form of Chapter 5 and everybody laughs like how ridiculous that is. Boy, that would have
been a mistake if they’d have printed that, we’d all be dead now.
(0:56 – 1:23)
And what you have there is an insight into what was really going on. You want to read
something gnarly, read the Akron Manual that was written by Bob and some of the boys
in 1941, I mean, you’ve got to realize who started this thing. But he says in the first
edition, the first 100 of us, there were only 77.
(1:25 – 1:42)
He rounded up by a third. And most of them drank. Most of the people in the stories in
the first edition drank, several of them committed suicide.
(1:44 – 2:14)
And there’s a movement around AA to go back to basics. There’s your basics. These guys
were badass, you know, sweet Dr. Bob and I mean, they would go into the hospitals, you
know, and they’d go from bed to bed and they’d say, you want to quit drinking? Guys say
no, they’d move on until they found somebody desperate enough to listen to what they
had to say.
(2:14 – 2:41)
Clarence Snyder claimed in Cleveland, he claimed a 90% success rate. You know how he
did it? For three to four months after you got out of the hospital, before they would let
you into the AA meeting, you had to work the steps. You were visited by four or five AA
guys every day before they would let you into the AA meeting.
(2:42 – 3:04)
So they weeded out the weaklings before they ever made it to the meeting. There are no
real issues in Alcoholics Anonymous, so we have to keep recycling the same old tired
ones. You know, it’s like the drug addict thing.
(3:05 – 3:27)
I mean, the drug addicts have been destroying Alcoholics Anonymous since 1935. Any
minute now, we’re going to collapse under the sheer weight of the crackheads, you
know. And you can pick them out, they’re all in the back of the room, you can see them.
(3:29 – 3:50)
They’re just a little bit sleazier than the rest of us. Hidin’ out in AA. A few years ago,
there was an NA convention in Tehran, Iran.
(3:51 – 4:11)
Because you can’t have AA in Iran, because it’s a Muslim state and there’s no alcohol,
therefore there’s no alcoholism. So AA is not allowed. But NA, you can have NA, because
evidently drugs are illegal, but they’re not immoral.
(4:15 – 4:40)
They had this NA convention, 12,000 people showed up. The only convention in the U.S.
that’s bigger than that is Founders Day. Now, do you suppose there’s some alcoholics
hidin’ out in the NA meetings in Tehran? Any minute, NA is going to collapse from this.
(4:45 – 5:08)
I mean, AA shouldn’t work at all. Rule number one in Alcoholics Anonymous, if there’s
any rules at all, this certainly is one, everyone gets to come. Now, that shouldn’t work,
because you and I both know that there’s some people that should be weeded out of this
thing.
(5:09 – 5:41)
You can pretty much pick them out. You know the ones that are incorrectly alcoholic?
They wanted to increase membership, so they took out Honest Desire to stop drinking,
you know? That was a marketing move. Those are just my opinions, but they’re really
good ones.
(5:47 – 6:05)
The way AA handles singleness of purpose is brilliant, it’s absolutely brilliant. There’s
some people that are saying that we’ve lost our edge, that we used to have a 75%
success rate, and now it’s less than five. Or however they want to make up the statistics
that they don’t understand anyway.
(6:08 – 6:23)
The way we handle it is, if you have some weird, fringy problem, we say, start your own
group. You can have our book, you can have our traditions, you can take the steps, you
can do whatever you want. And now there’s over 300 12-step groups, organizations, 300.
(6:23 – 6:38)
When they came up with Code Dependence Anonymous, they came up with one that
every living human being qualifies for. So now everybody can work the steps. That’s how
we deal with it.
(6:38 – 6:52)
Go ahead and start your own little fringe group. I think it works really well. I think you
have to consider that when you look at the growth or the not growth, whatever your
leaning is.
(6:52 – 7:00)
Look at the growth of recovery around the world. Just recovery in general. That came
from us.
(7:02 – 7:11)
Everyone, everyone wants to get born again. Here we are. This is what it looks like.
(7:12 – 7:26)
It’s us. We’ve been born again. We’ve been awakened.
(7:26 – 7:55)
Some years ago I was sitting with this pretty big-time Indian guru, and he was giving a
talk here in the US, and a friend of mine was connected with him, and so after his talk we
went in the back room and we were just sitting talking with this man, really interesting
man. He looked at me, I’m talking away like I do, and he looked at me and he started
laughing. I said, what are you laughing at? And he says, I just love you alcoholics and
drug addicts.
(7:55 – 8:19)
I said, why is that? And he goes, everyone else out there is trying to get awakened.
You’re just trying to figure out what the hell happened. Isn’t that true about us? What the
hell happened? I mean, that’s certainly my story.
(8:20 – 8:39)
What the hell happened? I was 37 years old when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I
was done. I was done.
(8:40 – 9:03)
My sobriety date is March the 27th, 1985. You’ll hear people many times, and I’ve
actually said this myself over the years, you know, you take a cake and you’ve been
sober a significant amount of time and you say, I never planned on staying here this
long. That was never the plan.
(9:04 – 9:22)
But you know, the truth about that, when I think back on it, if I can remember it all, I was
really hoping that this would work. And I think I really hoped that I could stay here for the
rest of my life, fairly early on. You know, it’s like the rest of us.
(9:22 – 9:30)
I didn’t think I could cut it. I figured I’d probably weenie out like I’ve done on everything
else. But I really, I wanted to be here.
(9:31 – 9:40)
And at 28 years sober, I am damn glad I’m here. You know, I mean, I’ve loved this thing
for 28 years. I have never lost my enthusiasm for it.
(9:41 – 10:05)
I have never, ever been bored in AA. And I’ll tell you, if you’re sitting out there tonight
and you’re bored, it truly is because you are boring. Because this is better than any
reality TV show they’ll ever make up.
(10:06 – 10:46)
This is better than Swamp People, man, I tell you. Some years ago, I was sitting in my
home group and this brand new guy, really new guy, he says, he gets called on to share
and he says, the fog is lifting and the planes are beginning to land. Doesn’t that just
make the hair on the back of your neck stand up? You know exactly what that guy’s
talking about, you know.
(10:48 – 11:16)
Same meeting, another new guy, same meeting, later on in the meeting, this guy gets
called on and he says, I know it’s an inside job, I just don’t know how to get in there.
These are pearls, they’re pearls, you can’t make that up. Where else are you going to
hear stuff like that, you know.
(11:25 – 11:40)
By the time I was 17, I was a bad drunk in high school. Like most of us, you know, I
started drinking when I was 14 or 15 years old. Within two or three years, it was a
lifestyle.
(11:41 – 12:01)
I mean, at 17, I had the big jacket, the greasy Levi’s, the slouch and the sneer and the
foul mouth and a bad attitude, and I carried a gun at 17. And I have no idea where any of
that came from. I wasn’t raised by people like that at all.
(12:02 – 12:09)
Matter of fact, my father was sober and my mother was really active in Al-Anon. My
father got sober when I was six years old. I got raised in AA.
(12:10 – 12:22)
On top of all my other problems, you know. You know. There’s nothing worse than living
in a house with two people with clear eyes that know exactly what’s going on in your
head.
(12:26 – 12:36)
It’s just not fair. But at 17, you couldn’t talk to me. I was gone.
(12:39 – 13:01)
Now, today, in Alcoholics Anonymous, in this program that by some people’s opinion has
lost its edge somehow, the children are coming in. Have you noticed? And the little
bastards refuse to leave. The children are coming now.
(13:02 – 13:18)
You know. I mean, they’re coming in and they’re staying sober. And every one of them is
about as politically incorrect as you can get.
(13:19 – 13:43)
These are polyaddicted, depressed, bipolar aliens coming into the meetings. They’re
being shipped here by the… Do you have them up here? I figured you were shipping
them all down to Southern California. Polluting our meetings with them.
(13:45 – 14:04)
My home group is the Hermosa Beach Men’s Tag. It’s where the men are men and the
sheep are nervous. There’s anywhere between 80 and 110 guys on a Monday night
shoehorned into this room and we’re sober correctly there.
(14:04 – 14:29)
We don’t care about how your day went. If you start sharing about your girlfriend, we’ll
just clap till you stop. Right? Right-wing death squad, A.A. And the kids started coming
in.
(14:29 – 14:38)
A bunch of the old guys left. They go, well, we’re not a daycare center. There’s this
illusion like they’re coming because A.A. is so hip.
(14:40 – 15:08)
My friend Scott Redman used to say, Alcoholics Anonymous has offered me a level of
lameness that I didn’t know was available. You know? I think they’re coming here
because they need help. Anyway, a few years ago this kid’s taking a cake and you gotta
stand up at the end of the room and it can be really intimidating because we are judging
you.
(15:10 – 15:43)
But we’re not shy about that. And this kid gets up there and he’s 15 years old and he’s
taking a one-year cake. He gave the most right-wing A.A. pitch I think I’ve ever heard
and at the end of it he’s standing there yelling and pointing and he says, and if you’re
sitting out there and you don’t have a sponsor and you’re not working the steps, may
God have mercy on your soul.
(15:57 – 17:28)
I went up to him and asked him to be my sponsor. So the demographic is changing, isn’t
it? Recovery is available at all levels of our society now. It’s what Bill Wilson wanted.
He wanted hospitals across the country, remember? He went to Rockefeller to get the
money and Rockefeller in his brilliance wouldn’t give it to him. Truly, I mean it would
have destroyed, I’m convinced it would have destroyed A.A. If he had handed Bill Wilson
a couple of million bucks and Bill and the boys you know we might be somewhere else
this evening. Who knew better about the corruption that money can bring than John
Rockefeller? But it’s happened now.
There’s hospitals across the country. Maybe it didn’t look like what he planned. Maybe
it’s been imperfect from time to time.
Maybe it hasn’t worked very well. But it’s available now. It’s part of the lexicon.
It’s part of our language now. We talk about recovery as much as we talk about addiction
and alcoholism. There’s a very, very strong movement afoot now to start legalizing stuff
in order to put people in recovery rather than fill the prisons.
(17:29 – 17:50)
70% of the prisons are filled now. I mean there’s real dialogue about this now today. I
mean it is changing.
We have changed the face of the planet. I believe Alcoholics Anonymous is the single
most significant social movement of the 20th century. I believe it.
(17:57 – 18:14)
As imperfect as we are we don’t do it very gracefully. We have a tendency to get a little
pissy from time to time. But here it is.
It works. It works. It really works.
(18:15 – 18:31)
It works even when we don’t work it sometimes. I mean it has held me in good stead for
28 years and there’s been times where I’ve not done a very good job of being part of it.
But I’ve never wandered away.
(18:31 – 18:55)
I’ve never drifted away. I’ve never stopped going to meetings. I’ve never stopped
communicating with my sponsor.
I’ve never stopped sponsoring people. I mean the one thing that will hold you around
here, that will hold you in here when all else fails is if you’ve got a bunch of people that
you’re sponsoring, they will come and get you. I mean I have a bad liver.
(18:55 – 19:26)
I need a liver transplant. I’m on a list. I’m very sick and I end up in the hospital all the
time.
And these new people that I sponsor could give a shit about any of that. They call up and
they say, how you doing Bill? And I start to tell them and they interrupt me and start
talking about themselves. So like Bob talks about, I don’t have time to sit and think
about me because you interrupt that process all the time.
(19:27 – 19:40)
There’s no peace in my house. But that has kept me around when there were many
times I didn’t want to be. Because I’ve fallen in love with you.
(19:42 – 19:55)
I can’t do this without you. If all I’m doing is going around and speaking at meetings and
speaking at conferences, I’m not doing AA. All I can do here is report to you about what
I’m doing.
(19:56 – 20:07)
And if I’m not doing anything, I’m just lying. If I’m just coming here and talking to hear
myself talk, it doesn’t account for much. This is not going to keep me sober.
(20:08 – 20:15)
It might keep you sober. If I say some really good stuff that causes you to go out and do
something, maybe it will. I don’t know.
(20:17 – 20:24)
But at 17, you couldn’t talk to me. At 17, I wasn’t listening. And my story is just like
everyone else’s story here.
(20:25 – 20:33)
I mean, the drunkologue can be different because we come from different places. We
come from different cultures and different things happened to us. Different people raised
us.
(20:33 – 21:32)
But every one of us, as far as I can tell, tells the same story about long before we ever
drank, we felt disconnected. We didn’t feel part of. We felt like the aliens had dropped us
off.
We’re waiting for the mothership to return. You know, we would lose ourselves in books
or food or something. There was some kind of addictive process that was going on long
before we ever drank.
But we feel this sense of separation. And we talk about that like it’s some kind of unique
experience. When we talk about that, we’ll sometimes use this term alcoholic thinking.
As if there is such a thing. I mean, Silkworth heard that phrase in the early AA meetings.
In 1940, he ran off and wrote a paper about it.
You can imagine him sitting in the rooms going, oh, jeez, they’re making stuff up now.
You know? The only place you ever hear that term alcoholic thinking is in Alcoholics
Anonymous. No one else uses that term.
(21:32 – 21:55)
You know what the professional community say about us? They say we are emotionally
immature. And we hear that and we go, no! I have special thinking. I have alcoholic
thinking.
(21:56 – 22:07)
And it’s never going away. And you need to consider that when you’re dealing with me.
Alcoholic thinking.
(22:10 – 22:29)
The difference between us and other kids that also feel that feeling, if you’ve ever raised
teenagers you’ve seen it in them. They turn about 13, they look at you and you are the
stupidest creature they’ve ever seen in their life. You don’t understand, nor will you ever
understand.
(22:30 – 22:44)
And the difference between us and those other kids is we medicated that feeling and we
never grew out of it. And now we show up in AA and we’re going to grow up now. And
the chances of us doing that and looking good are really slim.
(22:52 – 23:23)
The other part of the story that’s always the same is we talk about having a couple of
drinks and that feeling goes away. It disappears at some level. We feel whole.
All the promises come true. And the fear of economic insecurity just goes right out the
window. I mean, we’re free.
All of it. We can go out and go to the party and meet her or him and have some fun. So I
think that was the whole idea behind the drinking thing, if I remember correctly, was to
have a couple of pops and get out of the house and go party.
(23:24 – 23:42)
I ended up naked in my living room watching religious television taking notes. Party! I’m
having sex, menage a uno. There’s no one else in the room.
(23:45 – 23:56)
We’re partying with Billy now. It’s getting serious. The next time some guy walks in here
and says, I’m just a party kind of guy.
(23:56 – 24:10)
Ask him how many other people were at the party you were at. We have an odd
tendency to end up completely physically alone. Drinking and thinking.
(24:13 – 24:53)
If you see an alcoholic laying in the gutter in his own piss and poop if his eyes are open,
you can bet he’s got a plan. By the time I was 22 years old, I was in the Oregon State
Mental Institution. I needed a little rest.
(24:55 – 25:01)
It was the 60s. It was hard work changing the world. It was a great time to be a loser.
(25:01 – 25:15)
We had a uniform and everything. I don’t even talk about it now because I’m not exactly
sure what really happened. It was an interesting time there.
(25:16 – 25:32)
I was in San Francisco and I was there. By 1969, I was in a mental institution. I had met
her at Bass Lake above Fresno on the 4th of July 1966.
(25:33 – 25:41)
The Hell’s Angels rode in that valley and I found my career path. That looked really good
to me. I wanted to be a gunslinger, a tough guy.
(25:41 – 25:47)
That’s my story. I was a surfer and a biker and a tough guy. I never went to the beach.
(25:51 – 25:58)
My motorcycle rarely ran. I was afraid to fight. But I looked really good.
(25:59 – 26:10)
I had a chrome Nazi helmet for a hat, a primary chain for a belt, and big black boots with
chains around them. I’ve got tattoos all over me. But I had a clip-on earring because I
didn’t want to hurt myself.
(26:21 – 26:37)
My biker nickname was Horny. I have it tattooed on my arm right here. And it’s
misspelled.
(26:46 – 27:45)
It’s H-O-R It’s H-O-R-N-E-Y Horny I am never going to remove that. It’s a great example of
my mental prowess. So we went up to Oregon.
She lived up in Oregon. She was supposed to take the bus back and I drove her back
there. We got married and had a couple of kids.
At 22 I was running with an outlaw motorcycle gang. I was sticking needles in my arm
every day and I was drinking like a fish. I wasn’t coming home to that family and they
were on welfare.
(27:45 – 27:53)
And we lost a house, a couple of cars, jobs. We lost ourselves. It was horrible.
(27:53 – 28:15)
It was horrible. Anybody else here been in a mental institution? I remember you. There’s
always somebody who goes, Woo! Party! Well there’s a bunch of you.
(28:16 – 28:25)
There wasn’t very many hands. So there’s a bunch of you out there going, Well it really
wasn’t an institution. They were just observing me.
(28:38 – 28:47)
I came back down to California and I tried to get normal. The state of Oregon actually
kicked me out. There was a lot of violence and it was really awful.
(28:49 – 29:00)
We laugh at that stuff because it’s not like that anymore. When it’s like that it’s not
funny, is it? It was awful. I was a mess.
(29:01 – 29:15)
At 22 I could have very easily gotten sober. I really needed you at 22 years old. I don’t
remember anybody in that mental institution talking to me about recovery or AA or
anything like that.
(29:15 – 29:41)
They just shoot you up full of Thorazine and teach you how to walk backwards in paper
slippers. Great life skills. I was on the ward that Ken Kesey worked on when he wrote
Cuckoo’s Nest.
They filmed it on my ward. Now I’m not bragging. But some people went to college.
(29:41 – 30:05)
This is all I got. I went up there some years ago and spoke at a convention in Salem and I
told this long ponytail guy next to me that I was in the mental institution. He looked at
me and he went, I work there.
I went, of course you do. He took me and showed me around and stuff. Since that time,
I’ve been up there a bunch of times.
(30:05 – 30:31)
A friend of mine went up there to speak and they made a t-shirt for me. It says, Oregon
State Hospital Alumni. Who would wear that with pride? But I came back down to Los
Angeles and my sober father, who rarely preached to me, never really, him or my
mother, or either one.
(30:33 – 30:48)
Don’t make Al-Anon jokes if you don’t know what it is. A lot of people make a lot of stupid
Al-Anon jokes because they don’t know what it is. But if you know what Al-Anon is, you
can make some great Al-Anon jokes.
(30:52 – 31:33)
Just stop and think of the consciousness of an individual that would live with us on
purpose. What are they thinking? But he let me sleep in his garage and he gave me a job
in his machine shop in El Segundo. And I tried to clean up my act.
And what I did, what a lot of alcoholics did, especially alcoholics from the 60s. Bob and I
have talked about this as well. One of the reasons I know beyond a shadow of a doubt
that I’m an alcoholic, because I quit everything else.
(31:35 – 31:43)
It really wasn’t that big of a deal. And I was pretty into it. But I never considered stopping
drinking.
(31:45 – 31:56)
Don P. used to say, he says, my drug of choice was heroin. The drug that I had no choice
over whatsoever was alcohol. And that’s true for me.
(31:56 – 32:26)
I never attempted to stop drinking. But you know, you gotta quit shooting heroin
because you can’t find anybody to go along with the concept of social heroin use.
There’s just no support for the position.
And you gotta stop taking acid because normal people have two-way communication
with each other. With LSD, you don’t really need the other person. You just party with
yourself.
(32:28 – 32:36)
And I quit all that. And I met another woman because I can’t ever, ever be alone. It’s a
group effort getting me through life.
(32:37 – 32:45)
It takes a village. And I met her. We set up housekeeping and got married.
(32:45 – 32:57)
And we had a couple of kids. And this was 15 years after the mental institution. I lived in
the house with that woman, that wife of mine, and those two small children.
(32:58 – 33:36)
And I had no emotional connection to another living human being. And I didn’t know that.
I didn’t know it was that bad.
The alcoholic life seems like the only normal one to me because it’s the only one I’ve
ever known. It wasn’t like I had a life. And then I started drinking and it all went to hell
and I’m trying to recapture what I once had.
I never had a life. So the alcoholic life is the only thing I know. I can’t stand outside
myself and have a separate experience and then compare it to the one that I’m having
to determine that there’s anything wrong.
(33:37 – 34:35)
I think I’m connected to you. I think, I mean, you live in the same house with me.
Physically, we’re close.
We’re in proximity to each other. But I don’t know that I have no emotional connection to
you. I’ve never been connected.
How would I know that there was something missing? But at 37, there I was. And up to
this point, evidently this was the end. And I got drunk one more night, stayed up all
night, nothing special, nothing particular crazy happened.
You know, the sun comes up one more time and you know it’s going to be another
miserable day. You know, we don’t need any other proof that alcoholism is physiological
other than that last three to five years that you and I were out there. There’s no party.
There’s no party. There’s no rock and roll. There’s no hip dope.
There’s nothing cool happening. I’m just surviving the day. I’m getting through the day.
(34:35 – 35:15)
It’s maintenance drinking. I’m drunk from the neck down. There’s no more mental and
emotional relief.
You ever drank yourself clear? Boy, that was never the idea, was it? You tell people that
it stopped working, they think you’re joking. But it stops. I mean, aspects of it, and it
would kill the physical pain that I felt.
But I reached a point in my drinking where you were still there. I’m drinking for the
blackout. I never crossed a line.
I didn’t know there was a line. I mean, I started drinking at 15 and it became a lifestyle
immediately. And I lived like that for 22, 23 years.
(35:17 – 35:42)
Even when I tried to clean up my act, there was always something in my system. I mean,
I need something in me all the time to cushion the blow of you on me. I can’t deal with
you with just naked blood.
I can’t do it. I don’t get along. I don’t interact well.
I have rage. And the only thing that quells the rage is the alcohol. And you take that
away from me and I’m a mess.
(35:45 – 36:28)
So like any good gangster, I called my mom. Next time you see some big badass looking
guy walk in here, ask him, do you live with your mom? Chances are Al-Anons are
prepared. She was ready.
She was there inside of a half an hour. Because you know when we make that call, if we
lay down and take a nap, everything changes. You wouldn’t want to rush into anything.
(36:30 – 37:22)
And she came and got me, checked me into a place in Costa Mesa called Starting Point.
And I spent 35 days in there. Now I should tell you that I went to my first shrink when I
was 13 years old because of the rage.
I was just out of control. I would have rage seizures. And I spent a year and a half with
this guy and he helped me.
And he introduced me to my favorite subject. Me. That lifelong pursuit of self.
And I spent two tours of duty in the mental institution and went back for a follow up. And
this was a locked down barbed wire on the top. This is a nut house.
It was cool. You have some sparkling conversations in the mental institution. It’s a great
place to look for a bride.
(37:25 – 37:59)
I spent two and a half years in group therapy at one time. I’ve been to several other
therapists and psychiatrists over the years. I’ve been gestalted and rolfed and primal
screamed.
I know more about myself than is safe to know. So while I was in this hospital program,
this recovery program for 35 days, they made me wear a sign around my neck. I had to
make the sign.
We made it in crafts. It was a little rectangular piece of cardboard with a string that went
through it. And it said, I am not a counselor.
(38:07 – 38:28)
Because evidently there was some confusion. Laughter And after 35 days they let me
out. They just let us out.
(38:28 – 38:34)
Don’t they? Like we’re okay. Go forth. Multiply.
(38:39 – 38:49)
Where do we end up? Here. This is it. This is the world’s aftercare program.
(38:52 – 39:35)
Did you know there’s no referrals from AA? Did you know that? There’s no place you go
where you walk in and you say, I’m from AA. They sent me here. Laughter That place
doesn’t exist.
The inmates are running the asylum. We are the counselors. Now stop and think about
this.
I’ve been to a mental institution twice and I’ve been married three times. And people ask
me for relationship advice. Laughter I give it to them.
(39:36 – 40:12)
Laughter I figure, hell, you can’t hurt them. They’re in AA. Laughter Plus the fact.
Stop and think about it. Whatever advice I give them couldn’t possibly be worse than
what they’re planning on doing anyway. Laughter So now I’m a newcomer in Alcoholics
Anonymous.
(40:13 – 40:19)
I walk in. Here. This is it.
(40:21 – 40:34)
What up? Laughter You hear a lot of stuff, man. This whole thing about losing our edge. I
think we’re better now.
(40:34 – 40:45)
I think we’re as vibrant and effective as we’ve ever been. I really believe that. I think we
understand alcoholism a hell of a lot better than we did.
(40:46 – 40:53)
I think a lot that has been brought into AA from the professional community is good. A lot
of it isn’t. A lot of it I don’t agree with.
(40:54 – 41:01)
It’s hard for them to grasp the idea of a spiritually based program. But they’re coming
around. They’re coming around.
(41:02 – 41:41)
The psychotherapists now are actually talking and writing books about the spiritual
aspect of human nature. Treating it as if it exists. It’s a real entity and I believe that.
I think you and I have experienced that. Two things happened to me when I got here that
I feel real lucky about. One is, I just liked it.
Fairly quickly, I just liked it. Like you, like any of us, I really didn’t want to be here. It
wasn’t the plan.
But it didn’t take me very long to just like it. I got the humor right away. I liked the
people right away.
(41:42 – 42:00)
That was to change later. I got intrigued. I was intrigued by it right away.
I actually got intrigued on it in the hospital program. They had us read the book and stuff
and it made sense to me. I got it.
(42:01 – 42:19)
I mean, the God thing was stupid, so you just ignore that. And that’s easy enough to do.
Even to this day, I don’t believe God is an issue It’s not an issue.
We try to make it one, but it just isn’t. It’s an experience that we have. It’s not a concept
that we have to develop.
(42:20 – 42:36)
It’ll happen to us. If you stick around here and you do the work, it’ll happen. It happens
to everybody.
And it gets to the point where you can’t ignore it. You can’t deny it because you have the
experience of it. You can avoid the experience of it, and we’ll talk about that in a bit.
(42:40 – 43:26)
The second thing that happened is I asked this man for help and he actually helped me. I
showed up at his house every Thursday at 5 o’clock and read a chapter in the book and
he guided me through the steps. And he said things to me that made it very clear to me
that I found out later, not everybody feels this way.
I feel so fortunate that this happened to me. He said to me, he says, my job as your
sponsor is to guide you through the process of the 12 steps that you might have an
traumatic spiritual experience that will change you, that change your perception of the
world around you that maybe you’ll never ever drink again. I would be happy to sit here
and listen to what you think your problems are so that you will not share about them in
the meetings.
(43:28 – 44:02)
He said the meetings are for recovery from alcoholism, not about how your day went. I
immediately informed him that down at the Ilano Club they were breaking that rule right
and left. Should we go tell them? And he said, no, he says, AA is a safe place.
You can come here and share whatever you want. You can pretty much do almost
anything you want to do. I’m just describing to you my Alcoholics Anonymous.
(44:03 – 44:38)
Thank God I didn’t get somebody that has bought into this weird concept that we don’t
express opinions or give advice. If we didn’t do those two things we wouldn’t have
anything to say to each other. I’m a newcomer in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I need some good advice. I was married at the time and a couple, three months sober,
my wife came home and said I’d like you to stay home on Tuesday nights so I can go to
an Al-Anon meeting. I couldn’t believe she even asked me that.
(44:39 – 44:49)
And I told her, I don’t babysit, and I just walked out of the house. And I felt perfectly
justified in that. I thought she had really overstepped her bounds.
(44:51 – 45:52)
And I made the mistake of telling my sponsor. Thank God he didn’t quote a page number
to me. Tell me to go read something.
He rarely yelled at me, but on this particular occasion he said, it’s not babysitting,
they’re your children! Now you go back there and with a smile on your face you tell that
woman you would be happy to watch your children while she tries to find recovery in the
Al-Anon family groups. So I went home and I said, I’d be happy to have you. And the first
Tuesday night the little boy, he’s like one year old, he just passed out.
I don’t know what I thought he was going to do. But you know, I don’t like kids. I’m afraid
of them.
They’re more self-centered than me. It’s competition. I can have them and stuff, but I
don’t really want to do anything with them.
(45:54 – 46:47)
They don’t talk right. It’s just flame. My three-year-old daughter, you know, she wanted
to watch a little TV or play something, so we did that.
And then the next week went by and she didn’t want to watch TV. She wanted to go
outside and throw the ball around. This and that.
And the weeks went by and the months went by. And I began to develop a relationship
with these kids. One night after about six, eight months she comes home and she says,
well I’m not going to my Al-Anon meeting tonight.
And I said, well you better go somewhere. This is my night with the kids. Isn’t that how it
works? The worst thing you can possibly say to anybody in AA is take what you can use
and leave the rest.
(46:49 – 47:29)
That kind of thing will kill people. Because you’re going to allow me with this finely tuned
instrument to determine what is good for me? When have I ever shown a propensity
towards making good value judgments in the past? When? Tell me when. And where’s
the back-up evidence to this? I mean, I need somebody to sit down and talk to me like a
man and really tell me what to do.
And a finger pointing in the chest kind of way, no. I don’t know that that really, there
might be some idiots that actually do that, but I think it’s more how we take it than what
really is happening. I mean, this man just gave me good, solid, practical advice.
(47:29 – 47:51)
He wasn’t telling me to do weird stuff or ordering me around and if I didn’t do it he was
going to fire me or anything like that. It wasn’t anything like that, you know. I mean, you
don’t fire them.
That’s how you learn patience and tolerance is keeping the weirdos around. You exercise
that muscle, you know. You can pray for his death, but don’t say it to him.
(47:57 – 48:12)
So here’s what I think is going on here for whatever it’s worth. The first step says that
we’re powerless. They took it easy on us and just said that we were powerless over
alcohol because they didn’t want us to go screaming down the street.
(48:15 – 49:13)
My experience of 28 years for whatever that’s worth is that I think I am completely and
utterly and absolutely powerless over anything. I am not of the school that believes that
now that I’m sober I’ve been re-empowered and given the power of choice back. It’s just
simply, I understand that but it has not been my experience.
I think I am completely powerless and whenever I get the idea that I have some power
that is the source of all the suffering in my life. It comes from that, from that inability to
accept around me the way things actually are. I think they should be different.
I judge things. We all judge things, don’t we? We look out and we say, well that event
was good. That was a good thing.
I got the money. And in something else we look at it, well that was a bad thing. Well in
nature, if you look out in nature, there’s no good or bad.
(49:13 – 49:20)
There’s no morality play. Things simply are. The lion eats the lamb every time.
(49:20 – 49:31)
And we think the lion, the big mean evil lion, shouldn’t eat the lamb. And just because
we believe that, it changes nothing. The lion continues to eat the lamb.
(49:33 – 49:42)
He doesn’t understand that he shouldn’t do that, that he should be vegan. He just
doesn’t get it. And we try and talk to him, you know.
(49:43 – 50:32)
And whenever he comes across a lamb, he just, you know, it’s over. So then we say, well
we can’t seem to change this, so we’ll have hope. We’ll create hope.
And we’ll make a parable up that says there will come a time in the future when things
are good, because things are really bad right now. The present moment is not correct.
It’s incorrect.
But there will come a time where the lion will lay down with the lamb. Now if that occurs,
I’ll bet you that lamb will be nervous for eternity. It is the nature of the lion to eat the
lamb.
And there’s no right or wrong to it. And we just have a difficult time with all that stuff. Me
included.
(50:35 – 50:41)
In life there is pain. We lose people. People leave us.
(50:42 – 51:17)
People hurt us. People die. Stuff happens.
We lose our homes. We lose all our money. Stuff happens.
And we feel the pain of that loss. I believe that’s a natural thing. You and I as alcoholics
whenever we feel pain, we think there’s something incorrect that needs to be repaired
immediately.
And we’ve been doing that most of our lives. Medicating that so that we never feel bad.
So now we’re sober.
Whenever we feel bad, well we’re not working a good enough program. So we come up
with something. Something’s wrong that needs to be fixed.
(51:18 – 51:29)
Pain I think is part of life. Suffering on the other hand truly is optional. And what we do
when that painful thing happens is we make the determination that it should not have
occurred.
(51:30 – 51:35)
That it was unfair. Unjust. Now we’ve created the suffering.
(51:36 – 51:48)
And that suffering will last much longer than the pain of the event itself. This is called
resentment. Resentment to me really is kind of a first step thing.
(51:48 – 52:12)
I am utterly powerless. And my judgments are completely irrelevant. It says that my life
became unmanageable.
It alludes to the fact that maybe at one time it was manageable. I don’t remember that
time. I think my life does not need to be managed.
I think the next indicated thing is obvious. The alarm goes off. Get up.
(52:13 – 52:28)
It just unfolds right in front of me. All the time. The universe by its very nature is a giving
entity.
I just take exception to what it’s giving. I think it should be different than it is. I suffer.
(52:29 – 53:18)
If as a newcomer in AA I can grasp this powerlessness just a little bit. Just the drugs and
alcohol part. Just that.
Just that little bit. If I can grasp that. If I can cop to it.
The second step then becomes operational. I need to align myself with the power. I need
to be restored to sanity.
Certainly enough sanity not to drink and use but also enough sanity to be able to
glimpse the powerlessness. This is the beginning of acceptance. If I can do that the third
step becomes operational.
The third step is interesting. We’re going to turn our life and will over to what already
has it anyway. I think it was nice of them to lead us to believe that there’s something we
could actually do in the third step.
(53:19 – 53:58)
But isn’t that the classic alcoholic position? There’s the universe and me. That’s
impossible. I am not nor could I ever be separate from nature.
That’s literally impossible. We talk all the time about the difference between my will and
God’s will. Isn’t that the height of arrogance? The idea that you and I could do battle of
wills with the power that drives the entire universe? Well, I’ve been withholding myself
from the totality of all things long enough.
(54:00 – 54:52)
I’m going to acquiesce now and allow you to take me. Thank you very much. What life
and will is it talking about? The inventory, the resentments, fears, and broken
relationships.
The end result of living a life with seeming power. Evidently my happiness is dependent
upon your behavior because I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to adjust you so
that we can both be happier. And you resent that and I resent you.
You insist upon living your own life and it pisses me off at my core. I will carry this to my
grave. Fear? Of course I have fear.
(54:52 – 55:23)
Because this isn’t working and I have no plan B. So I hate you and I’m afraid of you at the
same time. Broken relationships, the sexless some people call it. What other kind of
relationships could I have but dramatic and traumatic ones if what I’m bringing to the
table is resentment and fear? Where do you suppose that’s going to end up? Married
bliss? The fifth step is a ceremony that we go through to complete the third step.
(55:23 – 55:34)
We physically and literally turn it over to someone else. We make that list. We make the
columns and we tell this other person ourselves and the manager this power.
(55:35 – 55:38)
Here’s my stuff. I’m pooped. You take it.
(55:39 – 55:51)
Six and seven are two paragraphs in the book. There’s nothing to do and we’ll be doing
that nothing for the rest of our lives. You can see what the defects of character are, the
shortcomings.
(55:51 – 56:45)
They’re in the fourth column of the resentment list. It says what were my faults and
mistakes. Not my part.
It says what were my faults and mistakes. It’s a different animal. I think the way we
address those comes later.
But we can certainly become willing. We can certainly for the first time in our lives
maybe begin to take responsibility for our own behavior and stop blaming those other
people. Come to realize ultimately it truly honestly never is them.
It’s never them but boy it sure looks like them. I mean it’s a hard one because
sometimes it’s just them. A friend of mine I got sober with had a tragedy in his life and
his sponsor and I were talking and his sponsor said to me, he says I went over and I
disarmed him.
(56:46 – 57:05)
And I said what do you mean? He was packing? He goes yeah he had two guns on him.
And I go why was he carrying two guns? He goes because they’re after him. And I said
who is? And he looked at me like I’m an idiot and he goes don’t you know who they are?
And I went oh yeah.
(57:10 – 57:20)
Eight and nine the manager gives us our first job. He says make amends I’m going to
help rid you of the resentments. The mechanism for ridding ourselves of resentments is
the amends process.
(57:24 – 57:53)
The biggest problem I have in my life today is not the defects of character that are so
obvious you can see them. Most of us it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. But there’s
aspects of me that were never developed.
That’s what the psychotherapeutic community wants me to do is go back and find that
good little Billy that I’ve suppressed. I don’t believe he’s there. I don’t think he ever
developed.
I never grew up. Literally I never grew up. And one of the things I don’t have is
compassion.
(57:54 – 58:17)
I can’t feel you in my life. And the offshoots of compassion are patience and tolerance. If
I’m compassionate towards you I will automatically be patient and tolerant with you
because I feel you.
I get it. I understand it. And in AA isn’t there that strange connection between the two of
us? When somebody asks for help and you sit down with them and you’re reading the
book with them and you’re sharing your life you connect with them.
(58:18 – 58:25)
More so than people in your own family or your wife or your husband. We just connect
with each other. We get it.
(58:26 – 58:45)
I get the pain. I felt the pain and I do truly feel your pain. And we begin to exercise that
compassion muscle every time we do that.
If we don’t do the one on one thing it never happens. It never happens. Don’t ever
mistake activity for action.
(58:47 – 59:21)
General service is great. Central service is great. H&I is great.
It’s all great stuff. I’ve done it all. I love the AA community but don’t ever mistake the
activity for the action.
Nothing will affect us more powerfully than one on one work with another alcoholic. At
the end of the ninth step am I capable of intimacy? No. It’s sober 101.
(59:22 – 59:48)
It’s about 15% of the program max. And we agonize over it don’t we? I mean we have
seminars and steps and I’ve done it all too. I’ve done step workshops and I understand
all that.
But it’s sober 101. It’s the bare beginning. It’s the stuff that we have to do to develop a
message that has depth and weight that we can then start to do the real program.
10, 11 and 12 are not maintenance steps. There’s nothing to maintain. This thing is not
about drinking.
(59:49 – 1:00:24)
That’s over. It’s about giving back. It’s about getting out of ourselves.
It’s about being relieved of the bondage of self. Thank God it’s over. I don’t have to work
on me anymore.
I tell you at this point in my life at 65 years old I am absolutely bored to tears with
myself. I mean there is just no stone left unturned. I mean how much more can I think
about? I mean I do it but it kind of makes me ill.
(1:00:25 – 1:00:37)
Because I know it’s a dead end street. Who cares? Who cares? I’m much better off when
I’m with you. You bring me out of myself and that is the healing process.
(1:00:38 – 1:02:14)
10 is the continuing inventory process. It’s about self-awareness. If what happened to me
in 85 as I was awakened the rest of the journey is to take that awakening and turn it into
some kind of an awareness where I’m actually aware that I’m awake and maybe there’s
something I can do with this.
Maybe there’s a reason I’m here. Maybe there’s a job for me. Maybe there’s something
bigger than me going on.
What do you think? I suspect maybe. 11 is about sucking up to the manager. It would
behoove me to try to get close to whatever it is saved my life.
Something touched me. And my opinion about that is absolutely irrelevant. Alan Watts
said one of the most powerful things I’ve ever heard in my life.
He said faith is not knowing and having that be okay. Think about that. You have to think
about that.
It is a profound thing. Faith to me always was I create a belief mechanism and I have
faith that that belief mechanism is correct. What he’s saying is something even more
powerful.
Faith is truly not knowing and accepting that that everything is always as it should be all
the time. That’s faith to me. And I believe that.
I have faith in that. The evidence is astounding that everything is as it is. In meditation,
the 11th step, you can watch your thoughts.
(1:02:16 – 1:02:34)
What you do in meditation, a basic meditation, is you sit and you close your eyes take
two or three big deep breaths and then focus your thinking, your mind on the breath
going in and out of your nose. And your mind will wander. That’s what it does.
It wanders. It has no desire whatsoever to be in the present moment. There’s nothing for
it to do.
(1:02:36 – 1:03:10)
So it wanders away. And you catch it. You realize, you become aware that you’re no
longer focused on the breath and you gently bring it back to the breath.
Now who is doing the catching? Good question, huh? Well one thing is for sure, beyond a
shadow of a doubt, conclusive proof I am not my thinking mind. Because if I was, I
couldn’t catch it. Now it thinks it’s me.
(1:03:11 – 1:03:47)
And I think it’s me too. I’m in collusion with it. And in AA, we talk about it in the third
person, don’t we? We say, my head’s out to get me.
Of course, we make it adversarial. It’s like, it’s who we are. And I don’t think it’s out to
get me.
Why would it kill the host? You know? I think it’s trying to help. It’s just stupid. You know?
All it’s capable of doing is taking the past and projecting it into the future.
(1:03:47 – 1:03:51)
That’s all it does. They were looking for you then. They’re looking for you now.
(1:03:52 – 1:04:04)
It’s them. You know? That’s all it’s doing. Now once I realize that, that changes the whole
game.
(1:04:05 – 1:05:14)
I don’t need to analyze it. I don’t need to work on it. I don’t need to share it with anybody
that crosses my path.
I can simply ignore the damn thing. Just ignore it. And every time it acts up, especially if
there’s anxiety or fear or something like that, when it gets really nasty, I can stop and
breathe and watch my breath and it goes away.
It can’t stand to be observed and it shrinks off into the shadows and it waits for you to
not be looking again and it comes back. And the only time it has anything to do is in the
future or in the past. When you’re in the present moment, there’s no necessity for it at
all because you’re right here, right now and that is all there is.
The twelfth step is where it all comes home. The twelfth step is why we’re here. The
twelfth step is why we did all the previous work.
It’s to prepare ourselves for the work. Should everybody sponsor people? Absolutely.
There’s nothing else to do.
(1:05:15 – 1:05:59)
You know? I mean you can pretend that you can make up for that by doing other things,
but I’ve yet to find anything that will have the impact on any of us more than that. And
we tell ourselves all kinds of lies. Well, you know, I don’t have anything to offer.
It’s not what I do here. I do other things. You ever heard somebody say, the way I do my
twelfth step work is I keep showing up to meetings.
I sit in the same chair so that when the people come in, they feel comfortable seeing me
there. Really? That’s what you do? But I judge no man. I got trained early that this is
what we’re here for.
(1:06:00 – 1:06:06)
This is what we do. There’s two things, two rules I live by. And I try very diligently to live
by these.
(1:06:07 – 1:06:24)
Sometimes I fall short, but most of the time I’m pretty good at it because I have to paint
myself in a corner for this experience to happen for me. If I start thinking about it, I will
determine that there’s places I don’t want to go, things I don’t want to do. Always answer
the phone.
(1:06:25 – 1:06:36)
Get rid of caller ID. Don’t screen the calls. Frightening, isn’t it? Have faith that whoever’s
calling you is supposed to be in your life.
(1:06:37 – 1:06:51)
Have faith. And we talk about faith all the time. We talk about trusting in God.
Trust God. Carry the message. Trust God.
Well, trust his ass. It’s how he gets in touch with us. He calls.
(1:06:52 – 1:07:32)
When I get on my knees and ask for help, he sends me you. He sends me you all the
time. Constantly.
I get it now. I get it. You’re bringing the message to me.
You are the catalyst for change in my life. It’s obvious to me now. I don’t know why I
couldn’t see it for years.
All the service work, all the sponsoring I did for years was based upon my ego. I was
rapidly working hard at trying to make a name for myself in an anonymous organization.
I have no idea what that is, but it’s very weird.
(1:07:33 – 1:07:43)
It’s okay. You can do that. It’s alright.
Your motivation is completely irrelevant if you’re actually doing the work. You’ll crash
and burn. I crashed and burned several times.
(1:07:46 – 1:07:52)
Rule number two. Never say no. When they ask you to do something, do it.
(1:07:53 – 1:07:59)
Don’t question it. Have faith that whatever you’re being asked to do is where you’re
supposed to be. What you’re supposed to be doing.
(1:08:00 – 1:08:12)
I’ve been living like that for a long time and I’m here to report to you it is an incredibly
abundant, rich life. Incredibly. Is it inconvenient? Absolutely.
(1:08:14 – 1:08:18)
My wife sponsors a lot of girls. I sponsor a lot of guys. We try to keep them separated.
(1:08:21 – 1:08:50)
She actually tries to set them up, which is not good. She’ll come to me and she’ll say,
that guy Jack, is he okay? And I go, no Karen, none of them are okay. And all these
young kids that come in, you’ve got to feed them.
They never have any money. And she feeds them. She loves them.
She feeds them. We have that house. I live in a house like the one I was raised in.
(1:08:50 – 1:09:02)
It’s come full circle. There’s a healing between my parents and I. And they watched me
live the same life that they lived. I feel incredibly fortunate for that to have occurred.
(1:09:03 – 1:09:12)
The last 15 years of his life, my dad and I gave each other birthday cakes in the Hermosa
Beach Men’s Tag. And I found my father in AA. I fell in love with my father in AA.
(1:09:19 – 1:09:47)
If you open your heart to this work, I guarantee you something. If you open your heart to
this, maybe you’ll leave inspired tonight. Maybe you’ve been around a while and you’re
not sponsoring anything.
Well, maybe I should get involved in this. I hope I can instill that in you. I hope it presses
a button.
I hope it pisses you off enough to where you start talking to some other people about it
and get off your ass and do something. I really do. I wish that for you.
(1:09:48 – 1:09:59)
If you open your heart to this work, whatever prejudice you have will walk across the
room and ask you for help. Guaranteed. Guaranteed.
(1:10:00 – 1:10:10)
I promise you that will occur. And then you have a choice. If you want to hang on to the
prejudice, if you want to hang on to the arrogance, if you want to hang on to the
opinions, send it away.
(1:10:12 – 1:10:16)
And you can find a lot of support for that in AA. There’s people that will help you. Send it
away.
(1:10:16 – 1:10:23)
We don’t work with this kind of person or that kind of person. You can get support for
that. I didn’t meet those people.
(1:10:23 – 1:10:39)
I was told I could never say no. This guy walked up to me and he said will you sponsor
me? I think I should tell you I’m gay. And I go, wouldn’t you rather have a gay sponsor?
He looked right at me and he goes, no, I don’t have a problem being gay, but drinking is
an issue.
(1:10:40 – 1:11:05)
Laughter Who knew? Who knew? I used to stand up at these podiums and I’d say that if
you were on medication you weren’t sober. I didn’t know anything about that, but I don’t
require any knowledge to form an opinion. I could just kind of do it on the fly.
(1:11:05 – 1:11:17)
And I heard some of you say that and it seemed like a really good badass opinion to
have so I just started doing it. Sure enough, this guy walks up to me and he says will you
sponsor me? I’m bipolar and I’m on medication. I went, geez.
(1:11:22 – 1:11:31)
But I can’t say no. It’s not up to me to decide. It’s not up to me.
I don’t care what your problem is. I’ll work with you. Many times it doesn’t work out.
(1:11:33 – 1:11:47)
But maybe you need to hang on to me for a while until you find the right person to be
with. I don’t know why you’re here in AA. There’s a lot of people here in AA I don’t think
that are alcoholic and they’re here for one reason or another and I have opinions about
that, but it doesn’t matter.
(1:11:48 – 1:12:06)
It doesn’t matter what my opinion is. When anyone anywhere reaches out for help, I
want the hand of AA to be there for that. I’m responsible.
I can’t fix you. I can’t be your therapist. There’s a lot of stuff I can’t be.
(1:12:07 – 1:12:14)
With these kids, some of them, they want a father figure. I can do that for a while. I like
the part when they love you and they think you’re really wise.
(1:12:15 – 1:12:23)
Then they realize you’ve stolen all this from someone else. There’s some real sweet
parts of it. I’ve also come to realize I’m not a father figure.
(1:12:23 – 1:13:09)
I’m a grandfather figure. So I start working the steps with this guy and I had the
experience of peeling him off the ceiling and lifting him off the floor. One time he came
across my living room, 40 year old grown man, curls up in my lap put his head in my
neck and just cried like a baby at the pain of his life.
Just the pain of being alive. And I just held him and rocked him. Karen walked through
the living room.
She goes, whoa. I mean that’ll get your attention. Now when I see that guy come and I
go, have you taken your medication yet? You got issues, dude.
(1:13:11 – 1:13:42)
I think all newcomers are bipolar. The whole medical profession wants to medicate us
and I don’t agree with that. I think it’s overused.
There’s a lot of stuff I don’t agree with. But if you come and ask me for help, I am not
arrogant enough to turn you away. I won’t do that.
I’ll be mean to you. It doesn’t mean I’m going to be sweet. I might tell you some stuff you
don’t want to hear.
(1:13:44 – 1:14:19)
If you come in and you want to change my Alcoholics Anonymous to make yourself more
comfortable, I will beat you with sticks. When you’re sitting in my backyard we can talk
about anything. But if you want to try to change AA or you want to argue, like these guys
get to the third step with a guy and I said, are you ready to do the third step? He says,
no.
I said, why not? He says, because I have a problem with God. And I look right at him and
I say, me too, let’s pray. That’s like the whole argument, like all the air goes out of the
balloon.
(1:14:20 – 1:14:25)
I had a couple of guys say, well I don’t even believe in God. I look right at them and I go,
nobody really does. Let’s pray.
(1:14:31 – 1:14:38)
I mean, I concur, brother. It’s a stupid idea. But it says right here in this book, pray.
(1:14:40 – 1:14:48)
Now I don’t know about you, but I’m an AA. This place is not hip. It’s going to make me
do lame stuff.
(1:14:49 – 1:14:59)
But I’ve been around long enough to where it works. My sponsor has told me several
times, Bill, you will be reduced to prayer and meditation. And I have been reduced to
prayer and meditation.
(1:15:00 – 1:15:24)
When you find yourself in a hospital over and over again and you don’t want to be there,
you’re powerless. And I’ve been put in a position where I’ve had to ask for help and not
of the humankind. I’ve had to get quiet, close my eyes and breathe deeply and say,
please help me.
Help me. And it hasn’t changed my physical condition, but it has changed my attitude.
It’s opened up meditation to me.
(1:15:25 – 1:15:38)
I mean, it took me 20 years before I really got into this stuff. Really started doing
something with it that was real in my life rather than just head knowledge. And it
incorporated into my breast and it has changed my life.
(1:15:40 – 1:15:48)
We have a very, very merciful entity looking over us. He’s been very merciful with me.
He’s changed my life.
(1:15:50 – 1:16:06)
I can’t describe the depth of what my life has changed with me being unwilling. With me
being driven totally by ego for years and years until that finally just leaked out of me. I’ll
leave you with this.
(1:16:08 – 1:16:18)
You’ll hear people in AA say, you got to give it away to keep it. No. You’ve got to give it
away to even get it.
(1:16:19 – 1:16:23)
If you’re not giving it away, you don’t have it. Thank you.