Bill H. of Gainesville FL. at the 10th East Coast Convention, Buffalo New York, June 1989

This morning.

03 On the front down

you saw an addict.

And then most sex economists hail Macedonian.

No matter how you put it. My name is Bill and I'm an addict.

Anybody that's here for their first convention, will you please stand up and stay standing?

Now if somebody close by give my heart, somebody close by get my heart, get my heart

and take it out for me.

And we're glad you're here. We need you in our lives.

I usually sheriff about 3 1/2 minutes on what it was like in about 50 minutes and what it's like now.

Talk about recovery.

I first started using in a whore house in Panama Canal in 1965. Drugs other than liquid. I got stung, I got laid and I caught the clap and I went downhill for the next 18 years.

Our present live in Gainesville, FL before I move there. Nine years ago I lived in Columbus, GA and I was an auto parts specialist, which is a long name for a thief.

I'd buy owned auto parts that you can sell to rebuilders all over the Southeast on a one ton truck. You know, it's under rebuilders in Atlanta. One particular night in particular, I was driving back in a round trip from Columbus, GA to Savannah. It's about 280 miles

and in the bottom of the truck there's an empty can, a case of, uh, Budweiser's or whatever I was drinking that day, empty Baggies, and I think I thrown the syringes after wondering whatever it took just to get normal that day. You know what, you had to get by just to be normal. And we're starting. I was in the truck by myself listening to the radio, having a grand time. And will it start to get a home run for the Pittsburgh Pirates and won the World Series?

And I'm still having raising the hell up in the front of the truck, steering with my knees, just having a ball

and about four or $5 from the house, my type of guy in the ass with my truck in this brand new car. And there's no big problem. But he called the cops and this cop showed up. And I used to practice all these things about standing on one leg of my, you know, my, and then doing all this and picking up a nickel and walking down the white line. And I was pretty good at it loaded, as I'm sure most of you were too.

This cop had me do something after it blew up the balloon. I didn't register at .1. I like that

I met with, I messed with sign people every time I get up there too.

You had me do something no cop had ever done. I blew up the balloon and I didn't register .1 so you had me say my ABC's. I want ABCDEFG all through. Tell me what you think of me,

he said. We've had a few and I can't get you for public grunt so we'll get you for driving under the influence. They roping up a ticket 2 weeks later I messed to the day my father had given me a round trip ticket on this chartered bus with military personnel from Columbus, GA to Atlanta, GA to see the Falcons play football.

I got hair down the crack of my ass from 9 years of growth from Vietnam and a beard down to here. And I've taken my quaaludes and my volumes with me in case I got nervous. And there's 40 people on this bus that retired generals and colonels and majors in the Army and my wife and I get on there and they got 220 gallon igloo coolers like construction water coolers slap full of bloody merits. That's 40 gallons of liquor on the trip up. I don't remember who the Falcons were playing. If they won their loss, I didn't give a shit.

You know, on the way back my wife and I argued the whole time about who was going to drive. You're too drunk, you're too shit faced. You can't see. We had to get back to the parking lot at 2:00 in the morning and wait till all the cars were gone before we could figure out which one was ours.

I won the argument. I'm driving home, it's six blocks to the house. On the third block I take a right hand turn and I pass out and I I smash in there. Guys just mind his own business as a stop sign head up. My wifes got nothing to jump out of the car and and walk home three blocks.

I got my 4 year old and my 6 year old daughter's Mickey Mouse blue plastic wallet in my Bo in my pocket. It's got my driver's license in. It's got a sheriff's badge from Arizona. I picked up in some scrap yards, God knows where,

and the same cop comes and I look up at him. I finally recognize who it is. And before he says anything, I go, ABCDEFC, I wish you, I said, tell me what you think of me. He opens up the door and I fall out on the street. He says, I think you're going to jail.

All my life, I kept using I, I ended up in front of judges and lawyers and doctors and they all told me I was crazy. And I was just concur, yeah. And then give me more medication or a fine or this and that. I got popped 11 different times. The longest I was spent in jail was seven days. I'm going to start in on recovering. Before I started on recovering, I'd like to have Suzanne from Rhode Island come up and read a paragraph that's real important in my life.

Get the book.

This is her first convention, and the newcomer is the most important person.

I'm Suzanne and I'm an addict. I'm Suzanne.

When at the end of the road, we find that we can no longer function as a human being, either with or without drugs, we all face the same dilemma. What is there less to do? There seems to be this alternative. Either go on as best we can to the bitter end,

yes, institutions are deaf or finding new ways to live. In years going by, very few addicts ever had this last choice. Those who are addicted today are more fortunate. For the first time in man's entire history, a simple way has been proving itself in the lives of many addicts.

It is available to us along This is a simple spiritual, not religious program known as Narcotics Anonymous.

Thank you dear. You did wonderful,

but based on life and desperation, I found some honesty in the first step and I went to my first Narcotics Anonymous meeting. I weighed 158 lbs. I had a pair of crutches, 1 tennis shoe and a bicycle and that's all I own in the world. You people hugged me and you told me you loved me to freak me out. I figured you wanted my crutches on my bicycle.

Three weeks later, somebody stole my bicycle and I said I knew what them son of bitches. Now,

when I say I like to share about principles and what they mean to me. And before I get into this, I'd like to thank the committee for letting me be a part of, you know, there's two people here from Florida. You know, that's wonderful. I don't know what the hell he's doing up here.

Umm, you know, as I travel all over the United States and come into meetings, I say my name is Bill. I'm Maddock. I feel right at home and my world is getting smaller and my family is getting larger. And you're my brothers and my sisters.

Uh, what a gift. What a miracle,

and based on life of desperation, I found some honesty in the first step, admitting I didn't know how to live without using. And I'm going to give you a little examples of what the principles mean to me and how to share some examples of my life.

Uh, and what I share is just my opinion. It may not be any. It's just my experience, strength and hope. And I hope you don't hear any advice up here because if you're hearing, if you like me, you don't take advice any damn high. You're hard headed. Uh, you got to experience it yourself.

Uh, honesty. At 90 days clean, I wasn't sharing from the heart at all. Still sharing from the gut. I'd share mostly. It means money's bill, and I'm confused

now. Back then, I probably had a moniker of five different things. I was a recovering drunk, a terminally.

What was that? I was a drunk as an addict. I love chocolate. I love women. And again. But then I had about 5 different things and you simplified it, told me and said hey man, you're just an addict. OK,

I got a book here. I'm going to read this one little section of something I wrote, and this is a

because I'm human and I know today being a human being is a spiritual experience. Thanks to you people. It's not a natural phenomenon for an addict.

And when I wrote it, I read this guy's book and I wrote my own upside down, naturally doing things different.

This is a little picture in here of a board final amount so I can climb a mountain. This is my writing here. I can go to a fellowship that helps me with my overeating, my dependence on alcohol, my abuse of cocaine, dilaudids, barbiturates, marijuana, my misuse of people, my isolated childhood, my alcoholic father, my domineering mother, my inability to let you love me, my inadequacy, my mistrust, my problems as a father. And it's all under one roof. It's all Narcotics Anonymous.

The clinic is all the problems in my life I found here,

you know, at 90 days clean, they gave me a red chip, said it was a danger chip. Back then you got a white one when you came in and 90 days later you got a red one. Well, I wasn't sharing from the heart. And I went home that night and then I was kneeling down with a set of rosary beads in one hand, a sawed off shotgun into my head in the other hand. I still felt like shooting dope and I wouldn't tell them. People at meetings I knew if I was going to use, I was going to die. So why pay somebody to kill me? And I'm going to do it myself.

And a phone rings and I got a lady shotgun down to pick up the phone. And the woman says, and Mr. Bill, how you doing? She's in the program, said oh, I'm fine, Everything's wonderful.

I had no idea what honesty was about.

I got something in in Narcotics Anonymous called a sponsor. I'd like to share a little story before I get into that. A woman brings a little fat son to the guru and says guru tell my son to quit eating sugar, it's killing him. And the girl who looks at her little fat son and says come back in two weeks. The woman just walks away over the sun. They come back in two weeks.

The woman says, guru, tell my son to quitting sugar, it's killing him. And the guru says quit eating sugar, sun, it's killing you. And the boy walks away and he quits eating sugar. And the mother says, I bought him here 2 weeks ago. Why didn't you tell him two weeks ago? And the guru looked at the woman and said first I had to quit eating sugar. I can't tell you as a sponsor to do something I'm not doing. You know,

I have a sponsor in Narcotics Anonymous, He has a sponsor in Narcotics Anonymous, he has a sponsor. Narcotics. He has a sponsor. You know

you people got what I want. You know,

at five, five years ago when I had about two years clean, we finally got 7 meetings a week in Gainesville, FL and I didn't have to go anywhere else. I shared at a regional service meeting. The guy next to me wouldn't even let me cry. You know he wouldn't even let me cry. Based on life of desperation. I found some honesty in the first step, admitting I didn't know how to live. I found some hope in the second step and you told me I might be restored to sanity.

And the first step,

eternal is powerless over something, a disease called addiction that wasn't a substance. It's all-encompassing. And the second step, I found some hope and a power greater than myself. A power greater than myself was a recovery. Text was a meeting one night. Obviously it was a phone call. You know, it was IP, it was a pamphlet. There's something you shared in the meeting that saved my ass. You know, it had nothing to do with God. Thank God

Sanity 3 addicts go moose hunting down a pontoon plane. The pilot lets him down up in northern New York.

He said, I'll be back in a week. We got room for one moose. You understand? They say, oh, yeah, we understand, We understand. So the pilot comes back in a week and he lets down on the lake. He looks up on the shore and there's three attics and there's three dead. Moose

Pilot just shakes his head. And it goes on in the shore

as it's been running down. So we talked about, we talked about it and, uh, we're going to give you $600 to take back all three moves. And the pilot says there ain't a question of money. We'll wait. You know, the addicts get back together and it's in their GSR down,

so we're gonna give you $900 to carry back all three minutes.

The pilot says, man, it ain't a question of money, it's a question of weight. And then we got to get over these trees off this late and the policy is pissing in the winds. He says, OK, I'll try it for $1000.

So they strap on one-on-one pontoon and strap on a dead carcass. So we wanna move on another pontoon and strap on the other moose and stick a carcass in the back seat with two addicts and there's one in the front seat. And he's boogieing this plane. He gets up off the lake and he banks at me. Oh, it looks like they're gonna make it. He's about to get over the last big pine tree out here and the moose antlers catches him on the pine trees and they crash.

Well, there's attics laying all over the ground and carcasses everywhere and they got broken bones. And Eddie crawls over to Jack and Jack's coming out of a daze and he says where are we? Where are we

that he looks around, says well, as near as I can tell, about 150 yards further. We made it last year.

Hmm, it'll be different this time.

And Sandy, beautiful example of that is in the recovery text. Repeating the same mistakes over and over again, expecting different results.

Hope most of you all know what I do for a living. I also make a type of jewelry. It's Christian jewelry and I sell all of the United States. And I go to these charismatic conferences once in a while. One conference I try to get into four years ago was up in Providence, RI

and they turned me down. A woman over the phone turned me down and said we only allow artists from the New England region. I said, well, I happen to know that the person that used to own this company is not from New England, it's from Gainesville, FL, and it used to come up here.

She said, well, I've got the authority to invite outside artists to our conference. I said, well, what do I have to do? She said, let me ask you a few questions. I said, OK, shoot,

she said what's your relationship with the Lord? And I scratched my head and said, oh shit,

so I'm going to shoot the most. I'm recovering addict. And in my program of recovery, thanks to thousands of and recovering addicts just like me, I haven't had to pick up today. My higher power is whom I choose to call God. And she said, whoa, stop, that's enough. I said, OK, here comes the rejection. I can handle it. She said, if you can be that honest with us, we'd love to have you come up here. And then let me come up to Providence, RI, this big charismatic conference. They gave me the keys to their house, the keys to their car, those nice little bungalow out in the woods like we used to break in, You know, you, you lift up,

go in, you unplug the dog and then you steal everything. Then you plug the dog back in, you go out. You know, that kind of place.

And then our work through shows. I like to wear NA T-shirts and the people up there hug me and showed me unconditional love. Because I'd shut down every evening about 7:00 and I'd go find NA meeting. And back then you had to travel a little bit to find an entity meeting

another straw workforce of University of Notre Dame. And on Sunday morning, I was wearing a my favorite T-shirt. It's a hug America T-shirt from the Washington DC World Convention. The little nuns come up to me on Sunday morning and they said pray as a St. So you're a miracle, my son. I said, yes, sister, I'm a miracle. And they hugged me.

I said, what's so miraculous about you? And I said, sister, I used to shoot soap on a daily basis for 18 years, and then I'm gonna have to do it. And she back up, trying to clean her arms off, getting away from

based on their life of desperation. The honesty in the first step, the hope and the second step. I found some faith in the third step.

I'm also recovering Catholic.

I used to have nightmares of Penguins chasing me down the street with the rollers and yardsticks trying to beat the hell out of me. Tell me they love me, you know?

And the third step, it says we found a higher power of our own understanding. That's what's neat. The responsibility is back on me. Everybody's always wondering what's God's will? What's God's will? God's will for me is to grow up, you know, to be responsible.

It's real simple.

It says we made a decision.

I want to talk about God first bargaining decision,

little girl, it's coloring. It sounds so much like my daughter Bridget. I always want to say she told me a story, but that'd be a lie. A little girl, a four year old is coloring in the in the kitchen and her dad comes in making a cup of coffee, says what are you doing? What are you doing? She said I'm coloring. So he goes on making the coffee. So what are you? What are you coloring? I'm drawing a picture of God

you guys on it turns on it looks like it's nobody knows what God looks like. She just smiles and says they will when I get done.

It's a God of our own understanding.

I've got permission to share this story with a guy sponsor in Memphis, TN who happens to be gay. He and I have done a fifth step together in Nashville about two months ago. And after five hours of intensive sharing, we're laying on the floor of this hotel.

And I left at him, said, you don't have a God in your life that loves you. And he started crying and said, yeah, I know. I said, well, we need to change your concept of God, you know,

So it's not me, it's not your mother, it's not your father. What are you comfortable with? And we both thought for a while and we came up with them.

We're gonna put guide an address, throw some pearls around in there from the high heels. And he said, when I pray, I'm not gonna say our fathers who are in heaven or our mother who are in heaven is gonna say girlfriend. I will defend his right to have that girlfriend as his higher power till I die. You know, it's up to him.

He called me a week later and said it's working, it's working, girlfriend listening,

beautiful, beautiful. There was a woman that came through our area and we asked her to close the meeting. Back then when we used to use the Lord's Prayer four or five years ago

and she said our mother who art in heaven and actually that made sense. And my father beat the hell out of Maine all my life. You know, a warm, loving, caring God might be our mother. You know, today I know my God doesn't have a sex. It doesn't make any difference. I, I don't understand God. How can I as a human being understand a deity like that? I can see it in your eyes and your hearts when I come to meet. I can see hope in your eyes and your hearts. You know, there's a guy here that had one day clean last night.

Is he here?

OK, as you let him tell me how he's cleaning the bed? I'm a newcomer. No matter how much cleaning time I got, I'm a newcomer. I got to remember that.

Made a decision in 3rd step. One of the toughest decisions I had to make.

I had about three years cleaned my, all my kids lived with their mother in Georgia and I hadn't bothered to get a divorce.

And uh, by then 13 year old daughter called up and told me that dad mom's been beating me with an extension cord and I got marks all over my leg and I can't go to school. And there was nothing I could do to save that child over that phone. All I could do is cry and walk down the street and share with another attic. And I came back and it forced me to get a divorce and try to seek custody of my children. Unlike most of you guys, I got a rap sheet like this and in the state of Georgia I lost the case.

But at Christmas time that same year,

all my children came to live with me for 10 days.

I took the two little ones to meetings every night. And I wish I could pick up this program as quick as kids do. It's neat to have children here amongst us now when we're using. They always had to stay out in the car in the alley, you know, back home Now, they're right. They're just, you know, we're big kids and they're little kids, you know, and

I just, we spent 10 days together at Christmas and I took the two, my daughter Bridget and my son Jeff, to meetings every night. And I was on one of these fat diets, which I'm still on now. Or donate any red meat. You don't need any sugar. And I was going to have in 30 days, I was going to lose 25 lbs and have any woman in the world just laying at my feet. Whichever one I want. Pick a color, any color you know

ain't happened yet.

But I go home after meeting tonight and I look at that ice box.

My daughter doesn't say remember that just for today. And I want a strangler.

We kneel down at night, we say our prayers together. And my son blew me out of the water the first night after we finished saying our father, he pat me on the back, said keep coming back. It works if you work it.

They teach me a lot, you know, I am teachable. Today,

after spending ten days with me, I had to take these children back to their mother and my 14 year old daughter Katie decided to stay with me. When you're 14 in Georgia, you can pick which parents you want to live with. I had to see these two little girls say goodbye to each other and they cracked me up. Not enough. I was doing God's will or my will and I,

I gave her now and the ex wife's calling the cops and I'm used to all that. I'm crying, my daughters are crying, my son's crying. And I said, Katie, if you want to stay here, it's OK. I understand. She said, no, dad, I want to come home with you. I want to try it your way. When we drove home 277 miles and back then I used to dress as a biker because I looked as a biker and I hadn't been on a bike since 1971 doing acid. You know,

I wore a red bandana and overalls and on the way home, I'm, I'm drying my tears with this red bandana.

And my daughter Katie snatches the bandana out of my hand, starts drying her eyes. And we made a fact that one day we'll all be back together. A couple years ago, they had me sharing a North Carolina convention. I got to this point in my story and I realized that all my children were with me at that convention. We were back together. You know, things happen in God's time, not in my time, thank God.

Based on life of desperation for honesty and the first step the hope and the second step the faith and the third step.

Found some self-discipline in the fourth step when I had to write my Friars in search and moral inventory. Yeah,

I finally got a sponsored about I think 2 weeks clean and he had me sit down and write the steps. You know, it's a miracle. I don't know how sponsors are putting our lives, but it just happened to be there at the right time, just right on time. And he had me write the steps. He had me read the basic text, take notes from what I read. And I was so screwed up. He made me take notes on my notes. You know, a friend of mine shares will have an attention span of a nap task when we get here, and that was me.

You bring up a topic at a meeting and I try to think of something real important to say. Just blow you out of this chair. You know, back then we had a real big fellowship of seven people in Gainesville, FL, and I was going to impress you people.

My arms are black and blue, and I stunk when I first got the NA, You know, you hug me and you told me you love me, and it freaked me out, you know, women hadn't hugged me for a long time. I liked it when both women hugged me, you know? Then the men hugged me. I didn't know if they were lighting their loafers or what, you know. But you told me to keep coming back. But the second or third meeting, somebody remembered my name said, hey, Mr. Bill, I just turned around. You know,

I I figured you had a subpoena or a warranty and I was getting my ass pressed it again, but I remembered my name.

Self-discipline.

My sponsor made me go to meetings and make a game at meetings, he said. You can't share for the last five minutes. You don't know a damn thing about recovery. You just keep your damn mouth shut.

I said, well what do you want me to do? He said take mental notes of what people are sharing, how to save your life. I said, well can I bring a pad and a paper? He said no, these guys are already afraid of you. Don't bring a pad and paper. They're going to thank you. Writing down a live stirring and across them.

So first night he gives me a top quiz. After I'm doing this, he says, what are you here tonight? I said, well, the little Jewish guy from Miami shared and he said, you know, 74 times in 3 1/2 minutes, you know, you know, you know, you know.

And So what it said about recover, I said, hell, I don't know. I was counting all of your notes,

they said keep coming back. It might even work for you, who knows?

My sponsor had eleven months cleaned back then. Nobody had eleven months clean back then. That was the guru man. He was the one. He had a job and a girlfriend. He had everything I wanted, you know,

and he had patience before he put up with some shit. I had come to him with my little old, you know, used to say you pole vault over mouse turds. Man, you make a big issue out of everything.

I come down with my little trivial problems everyday living on how to get by and he'd say so.

Hmm. What are you gonna do about it? I said, well, tell me what to do. He said no. That's the old con game. You want me to make your decision? When you screw up, you're gonna say see, hold you. You make up your own mind. Time to grow up, kid.

And the 4th step? You made me write about my resentments. You really write about my fears. You made me write about the harm I've done to others. It made me write about my relationship, sexual and otherwise.

In the first year I got here, they told me no relationships for a year I had. I was too proud to ask people what that meant. I couldn't masturbate it for six months. That's the biggest relationship I had when I got here.

Finally, I got the hard way. One night I asked my sponsor. I said, is this what this means, Martin? He says no. You sick pop keep

keep coming back,

so can you give me a hand?

He said. You are sick

now. When I got here, I didn't pray, I didn't cry, and I didn't ask for help. And something that broke, that gave me a gift of tears as a movie, one of the best movies I've ever seen in my life was A Color Purple.

And in that movie, I see these two little girls being torn apart as children. I see abandonment, I see rejection, I see all those poor issues of addiction and I'm crying. I took my girlfriend in time. I think she and I had been together about three years. I took her to see this movie and I'm crying like a natural born child five times during this movie. Not these little Boo Hoo tears and I'm talking

and she kind of moves over and gets the hell out of the way. Who is this fool? I know today? Real men do cry. They wear pink and they eat Peach.

Lots of Vietnam veteran. I was there in 686970

and took this guy who's on a relapse and come back in that 30 days plan he'd gotten almost a year and a half and took him to see this movie Platoon. I'd never seen none of those Vietnam movies I stayed away from. I said I used to be no big deal. Come on, see this movie with me.

So we go see this move and this guy with 30 Days Clean, this just shows me how my God speaks to you, to me through you people. And we go see this movie. And there's just one particular scene in this movie where this guy's been shot in the chest by his own man. He's been shot in the back by the enemy and he's in this field on his knees and he's he's got his arms up in the air and the chopper's pulling out and they're leaving him and you know the sucker is going to die. And in that one scene, I flashed upon the same issues. No rejection, abandonment, all of Vietnam plastic fund. And I'm balling my eyes out in this

30 days came holding my hand. And when I left that movie theater, it was the same as when I came back from Vietnam. One day I'm in the war, the next day I'm in Seattle, WA, saying what in the hell were those three years all about? And I hadn't, I didn't have a clue. And this guy's holding my hand and he had enough sense to take me across the street to a coffee shop and talk to me for an hour and a half. And he saved my natural ass. There ain't no doubt in my mind.

And he hugged me and said, welcome home, the war's over.

Same thing you people did,

OK.

One time I was having a lot of problems with faith, trying to figure out God and define God and figure out cubbyhole where God lived and what his credit card rate and what kind of car he drove and everything. This guy was six days clean, says, you know, my higher power never refuses to grant me an interview. I said, well, say that again. Let me write that down. My higher power, you know,

out of the mouths of babes.

No. When I wrote about my resentments, you know, resentments always caused anger and hatred. I know today hatred is too powerful and emotional to waste on somebody I don't even like.

I had to write about the harm they've done to me, how it affected me, what role I played in it. At first I didn't want to do it. My sponsor made me sit down with a legal pad, the infamous legal pad. You know, we're all lawyers.

A pen and made me say a prayer and do it for 15 minutes a day because he knew I'd get obsessed and compulsive about it in 15 minutes.

End up writing on resentment. I didn't think I had very many. I wrote 47 pages about resentments. I remember 41 names alone from Vietnam. Slow down, no run in the pool.

And uh,

he told me what to do with these resentments after we got done. I had to pray for these people to have everything I wanted. I had to confront these other people.

I wrote about my fears and one of the biggest fears I had when I got cleaned was my children wouldn't love me anymore. You know it.

Two years clean. I was coming home from work one day and saw a little red dog. Looked like a Wolverine and it's been 10 yard and he'd been there for four days. The people dragged up for a long weekend. They just left him there. No water, no food. I did the same thing you would have done. I picked up that dog, two houses for my house and took it home. Butcher's got five years clean now

that those people never came looking for that dog two houses away. I want to meet him that night. And I shared that I stole this dog and my Home group understood that I loved myself enough where I could love something else finally. And they said welcome home.

It took a while for me to learn how to love.

Today, no matter where you've been, no matter what you've done, you deserve all good things in your life, and you'll find them here in this fellowship beyond your wildest dreams.

Miracles. Do I like it when you do miracles like this, Right,

Hayden? Miracles. Miracles. Yeah. Wonderful,

wonderful happenings. I love it.

That's a miracle. Yeah. Can you do this?

I wasn't paying attention either what you did when I said masturbation.

I

and the left hand

If you're a liar,

we won't be on the world tape. No problem. I get over myself.

I wrote about my fears, my resentments, the harm I've done to others. Then I shared it in the fist after me. Takes courage.

I shared it with my sponsor and he's sitting on the couch for 4 1/2 hours listing this year he's going to Hean and Han. At the end, I said, damn, Martin, have I done something wrong? You know, I'm talking about people I killed, houses I burned down and all the atrocities I've done to myself and my family, my in-laws, my outlaws, Everywhere I've been. It's been like a hurricane behind me. He said, no, you're about normal. I said normal. I said, yeah, you're an addict, aren't you? I said, yeah. He said, well, you're about normal for an addict,

and he shared some of his fifth step with me.

I said, man, you're sick.

He said, yeah, so are you. And that's why we're here. I found some trust in the 5th step. Besides that courage. I let somebody know who I was. He didn't laugh at me. He hugged me and he told me he loved me. You guys have never laughed at me. You laughed with me. You know, I can get up here and tell my story and I'm telling your story. It's the same basic thing. We go from desperation to love, you know? We go from feeling like we're nothing to realize we're human beings. You know, we got some self esteem in this fellowship

and sitting down here. We are so talented. We got plumbers, we got lawyers, we got doctors, we got nurses, we got teachers. We ain't in jail no more. Man. What America?

We are an institution.

They label us schizophrenic crazy, so we'll never be able to tie our shoes. You know, for a long time, I believed him. But thanks to this fellowship, all things are possible. There's no limit to the amount of love in here. You can just feel it. And when you say miracle, I used to do a children's meditation where you put your hands up like this and you're staring at the other person's eyes. You touch fingers, you don't say anything. You just breathe in good thoughts about the other person and they're your friends. From then on,

we're like living, breathing miracles. What do we hear the first night?

You don't remember what it was either. An active something about America. I don't know. I wrote down and I am not

inspirationally activated Miracle. I am. Yeah, I love it

and encourage in the 5th step based on life of desperation, the honesty, the hope, the faith, the discipline and the courage.

I found some willingness in the sixth step.

I wrote down all my defective character on the opposite side of that, I wrote down the assets, you know, as addicts were trying to to focus on the negative. We we don't like to focus. You know, it's familiar. It's like Michael Jackson's glove. It's real mushy and pliable and feels and looks like shit. But all that shit comes flowers, you know, fertilizer. We got to focus on positive things and

I'd like to do positive affirmations in my life today and they work, they blow me away. They really do. Uh,

I was having a lot of problems with relationships at one time, at one time, hell, all the time. And

I started to have doing this

saying every day I really deserve loving relationships. I'd say that 40 times a day. Women started calling me up from all over the United States. I quit doing it. It freaked me out and I put the thing away. Man it's working too good.

Biggest defective character I have since I've been clean is Lust.

Once you want to clean up using the foxes, ladies in the world, I swear to God

you definitely got everything I want.

And when you men clean up, you're no longer competition for me. You're my brothers, you know,

I'd like to have first convention. I had a year and a half clean in Tampa, FL and this big Harry biker from Kentucky come up and he hugged me and he kissed me on the lips and I ain't going to take that. And I kissed him right back. You know,

they didn't stimulate me sexually, but I got his phone number

today. I know men do hug and we do touch and we do feel and something. I want to jump back to the 4th step. I read a lot of children's books. Now I'm 41 years old and I can finally read children's books and understand what the hell they mean. You know, one of my favorite ones is a velveteen rabbit. You know about that little bit of rabbit. This rabbit finally becomes real when this child takes it to bed every night and loves it. You know, loves it, loves it and becomes real. And that's what happens to us here. We finally become real when we get in here. We

a lot of people say they're real happy to be here. I'm happy I can be real here, you know, Finally got a place. I can be real, you know, and it's OK. Another one, I read the Grown men

little child's book and says there's a monster in my closet. It's a little bit of kid about four years old and he goes to bed every night with her. David, David Crockett, cool skin cap with a raccoon tail and little pop gun. They know there's a monster next. Is it like we all got monsters in our 4th step, right? And he doesn't know what to do about this damn monster in the closet. And he finally figures out what to do and he jumps up out of bed one night with that pop gun. He's around. Sure enough, they're just big purple headed monster there and got big old warts and scars, you know, and shooting in the knicker. What?

Take that back. But he knows that Macy's, that monster. He finally knows what they're doing. He puts that pop in on that monster. He makes that monster get in bed with it, and monster becomes his friend. When I tell you my secrets, they wither in the sunlight. I no longer have anything to be afraid of because your life is basically just like mine. When I share, a lot of women coming up after I share and they tell me about their incest issues and things like that. All those secrets in their closet, I gently try to steer them back to their sponsors. And you can tell me. You can tell her