Jack K. speaking in San Diego

I'm an alcoholic of the hopeless variety. My name is Jack Chisel

and it's a pleasure to be here. It's an honor to be a participant, a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and, and I especially enjoy this room. And I've been here a number of times.

Got a nice time coming down. My, my wife came with me and, and we stopped in Laguna and walked around a little while and the leisurely time down here and then had dinner downstairs. And, and to the best of my recollection, we didn't fight at all.

That's not what it used to be like, let me tell you that.

You know, even in the littlest ways, I noticed the effect of Alcoholics Anonymous in my life.

It's been an extraordinary change for me, and I didn't really think I was going to be able to participate in it. It didn't seem like it would be right for me.

It wasn't so much that I had no problems. I had sufficient problem to deal with by the time I found Alcoholics Anonymous or it found me. I've never been sure which.

I had been arrested ten times.

The first time was for manslaughter when I was 17 and I had totaled 12 cars. My liver was not doing very well. My wife was divorcing me. My four children, the youngest was 7, the oldest was 20. We're not speaking to me. I had not worked in three years. I used to describe myself as a functioning alcoholic.

Well, that's somebody that's married to somebody that does work. See, that's not at all.

I had no friends left anywhere and

other than that my life was going pretty well. See. And so it was not that I had no problems. I had plenty problems. I just gotten out of jail the night before I got 12 step. That is the only arrest that I have ever

contested. The others were legitimate. I mean the first one when I was 17, I just finished the 6th pack and I wasn't very good driver and an experienced driver and I caused an accident in which a man died. And

the last one, however,

in between there I, I was arrested for inciting a riot and for contributing to the delinquency of a minor in a variety of charges. The very last one, I never felt that they had probable cause. I mean, all that happened is my extreme caution while driving. And I mean, after totaling 12 cars, you should be cautious. You know, my extreme caution while driving

drew the attention of the heat to me.

I sat through three green lights waiting for the right one.

Well, I just couldn't get the right shade of green, you know what I mean?

And they told me over and discovered, to nobody's surprise that I was drunk. You know, I measured 27 that night. Thank you. And that's the way it was. And the next morning they gave me a kick out at 5:30 and, and I called my wife and she had come down to the

deputy sheriff's understanding in LA. To somebody familiar with it, yes, it's a decent accommodations. You know,

she would come down to bail me out because she hadn't been Allen on yet and she didn't know any better. And someone had, someone had notified her that I needed to be bailed out and she'd come down there and attempted to do it, but they wouldn't, they wouldn't bail me now at 5:30 in the morning. They gave me a kick out. So, I mean, they didn't plan to charge me, but

they just wanted to make it as inconvenient for me as possible, you know? And the reason for that was that I had managed to offend the arresting officers. And then when they were looking me, I made fun of the jailers name and then I did my citizen act, you know, I said, you get a, you have a right to a phone call. I said yeah, yeah, you do. I said, OK, loan me a dime, you know?

And I didn't think that was too funny. And then it was 3:00 in the morning in Los Angeles,

and I called New York City. And they didn't think that was funny at all, you know. And so when Gene showed up, they lost me in a building which is not as big as this one, you know, I mean, I was, I knew they knew where I was. I was curled up in the drunk tank around the drain there. And anyway, they didn't do that. They sent her home. And then they gave me a kick out and I called her and we had one of our typical conversations. I said where the hell were you

when I needed you? And she said I was there. I don't, I'll stay, we are come right back and get you. And I said don't bother, I'll walk. And I hung up on her. I don't know why I called her, I guess just to make her feel bad, you know. So I walked home and stumbled and staggered and stopped on the way to get well. And when I got home, she was leaving for work. And

just prior to that, two days earlier, my four children had gotten together in my front room.

Oldest was living in Phoenix, and she flew back especially to being in my front room to tell me that they didn't love me, want me or need me. And they told me to get the hell out of their lives. And they told me to leave their mother alone, that I was killing her. And they had a suitcase all packed for me.

And and I marched out of that house feeling lonely, separate, different, angry and afraid, exactly the way I felt all my life. I always felt like that. And I did the only thing I ever knew how to do about it. I got drunk and I stepped in the car that night. And next morning I called Gene and begged her like a child to take me back

and she didn't know any better. So she did. And the next day I was drunk again. And that was the the green light incident. And then they gave me a kick out. So I met her at the door. She was leaving for work and she said the kids were right. I never should have let you back and I never will again. Now, I have developed a number of skills that are necessary for survival for an alcoholic of my type. And one of them is the ability to

tell when they mean it.

And I got that. She meant it this time. She meant it now. I had been out of that house dozens of times. We've never been able to count them all up. I mean, I had snuck out, stormed out, escaped, you know, been thrown out, kicked out.

This time I knew she meant it, that it really was over, and she left and I felt lonely, separate, different, angry and afraid. I went out to the kitchen and I reached back under the sink where I had a bottle of white wine hidden and I got my stash out. I had a tiny little bit of grass left and I rolled the skinniest little Jay you ever saw and I, I licked the baggie. You know, waste not, want not. My mother taught me that

and and I spoke to joint and drank the wine and passed out on the bed.

That's a new no, no, no changes, you know, and Gene went to working on the way to work. It occurred to her for the first time in the 17 years that we've been together, there was a new idea. And she got her office and she looked up in the phone book Alcoholism, and she called them and told them about

and whoever spoke to her understood what was going on and gave her some instructions. And so Gene came back home at lunchtime and found me lying there on the bed not bothering anybody, you know. And she started to get me conscious. And there was always very easy in those days. And by the time she did, she was crying. Now I have seen her cry many times in pain, fear, rage, humiliation,

hatred. I'm sure she hated me tonight in front of the four children when she wanted to put a knife in my belly. And I, I didn't object. I mean, I raised my hands. I said go ahead, do it. You would be doing us both a favor. But she couldn't. She just stood there and cried. And when I when I awakened that noontime,

I didn't recognize the nature of her tears. It's because I had never seen them before. I was a couple months sober before it dawned on me. But those were tears of compassion.

But as she got me conscious, it had dawned on her that I was dying of a disease that I never chose to have. And so she finally got me awake. She blurted out what they told her to say. She said Jack, you're sick.

I knew that

you've been through the three days I've been through. You'd be sick too. I've been doing weed, speed and booze for three days. The only sleep I got it all was in the drunk tank there for a little nap. And you know, and so she said let me get your help. And I said okay. I didn't ask her what kind.

Who cares? I needed help to sit up, you know, So she left the room. She went out to make this phone call. And, you know, in the last 10 years or so, there's been a lot of research done on us. Ever since the insurance industry discovered alcoholism. They've done a lot of research and they've discovered some interesting things. You know,

there are a lot of us in this room who have made the little joke at the bar and say the waitress goes by and you say nurse, nurse,

you know, would you please bring me my medication? Well, turns out that's true. I mean, that is exactly what we're doing. One of the things that an Alcoholics of my type, I am lacking a sufficient neurotransmitters in comparison to normal people. I don't manufacture enough endorphin on my own and just what mood helps me to manifacture. So when I do booze on medicating, you know, and that was a little research

that the insurance industry discovered in their in their study of us, most of the things they've learned are kind of that sort of physiological knowledge, which verifies stuff we already knew and experiences of ours. Like, for example, in the book, it says there we are like men and women have lost their legs. We will never grow new ones. And the point of that is that our experience and our friends experience of having been.

Long time in some cases away from a drink and then take a drink and have it just be as bad or worse than it ever was. And so we say we're like men and women of lost their legs. And the research has shown that the reason for that and Alcoholics of my type, when I drink, ever since I started, every time I drank, I manufactured a little chemical called tetradline and I

in my brain and it's never excreted, it's just stored. And I kept storing this THIQ. And if I were to drink again,

the alcohol would mix with that THIQ and cause the kinds of things. And it wasn't

when I stop things like, you know, I'll have a few glasses of beer with you and then suddenly say, let's go to Tijuana, you know,

attend a party and have a little cocktail and then find myself throwing your coffee table through the front window, you know, or goosing the Hostess. I never know what I'm going to do, you know? And so I'm like a man who's lost his leg. I never will grow a new one.

And so the the research goes along with that. But

there still is an attitude among many the professionals that deal with us, a kind of a a secret feeling that our problem is that we are lacking in world power. Now you and I know that's ridiculous. I mean, people do have, the reason they're confused is they have never fully understood our goals.

I mean, I like to see them get to work on time, feeling the way we do some days, you know, I mean, you walk in and I say, my God, you're green. And so, oh, that's alright. I'll be OK. Just let me get till noon and I'll be fine, you know. So it isn't lack of willpower. And I have exhibited some willpower. That very morning

I had reserved 1/2 a glass out of that bottle for when I wake up.

That's not easy to do and I failed many times. I'd wake up in a damn bottle of be empty. I used to say, Jack, you have no foresight.

I have managed to save a half a glass. Gene left the room. She didn't say anything about not drinking. She was going to go get help and I didn't drink it. I don't know why I didn't drink it. Instead I shuffled after her to the phone. I wasn't very quick in those days.

And and he completed the connection and she said he wants to talk to you. Well, she was a little surprised and I was amazed. I mean, nobody wanted to talk to me, which I picked up the phone, which I rarely did. But if I picked up the phone, it happened to be a door collector, they'd say, when is your wife coming home? You know, I mean, I didn't want to talk to me. Nobody did. And

this guy's said he wanted to talk to me. And I grabbed the phone and he said, hi, my name is Bud. I'm an alcoholic. Can I help you? Can I hurt myself? Say maybe you could. Where did that come from? I hey, I don't want your help. I don't need it. And I don't want it. Don't help me, OK. And this guy said, can I help you? And I said maybe you could. And then other strange things. He said, all right, why don't you come up and see me? I said, where are you? And he said, Oxnard,

that 77 miles away from my house. And he said, OK, it'll take you a little while, I'll wait.

That's all right, all right, I'll go, I'll come. And he said, oh, by the way, don't drink anything between now and then. And hey, don't tell me what to do. You know what I'm saying? Don't. I don't follow rules, okay? I never do it. I don't like rules. I used to run red lights for drill, you know what I'm saying? And this guy's telling me, don't drink. And I heard myself say, OK,

OK, I won't strange stuff. And I didn't. I knew that if I were away from a drink for as long as two hours, that I, I rather have some mistakes and maybe worse. I mean, I sometimes got into what I think is called chronic jerk. I mean, just sudden involuntary movements, you know, people waved back at you, you know,

And so I, I got Gene to do the driving and I just shook, you know, and, and we got up there and this guy,

they sat us down and he had a year and a half. It's about at the time he told us what it used to be like, what happened and what it was like then for him. And I wanna tell you, you know,

when I was four years old, I discovered that I lived in an unpredictable world of violence. My father was an alcoholic, and I never knew when he was going to come home late. If he got home at 5:20 at Meanie, left work right on time and was home. And if it was later than that, it was trouble. And if it got to be six or seven, it was big trouble. If it got to be that late, then what we all started to hope for is

it would be very late because maybe if it got as late as 11 or 12:00, you'd be so drunk he wouldn't cause trouble, you know? But most of the time he'd come stumbling in obsessive and raging and, and maybe put his sister a window or choke my mother or hurt one of the kids. And, and

so that was the world I lived in. It's starting. I recognized that when I was four and when I was nine years old, Hitler marched into Poland and I became a spy. I started to spy on the human race. I tried to figure out what the hell you were doing. I eavesdropped on conversations my whole life, just trying to figure out what you talk about

when I'm not around, you know? And I don't think it's about me. I just don't know how you do it. I don't know how you live. And I got good as a spy must of wearing disguises.

I got a lot of disguises that I could pass among you and appear to be just like you. And I wasn't like it all and I knew it. One of the disguises that I put on was when I was 14 years old, I, I, you know, I was just inadequate. I couldn't contain. I was the oldest

of the children and I couldn't manage my father and I felt hopeless and inadequate and, and I I just wanted to escape. And I was full blown alcoholic who hadn't really started drinking yet. And I had a lot of the character traits, like for example, deviousness. And so I decided to run away from home without anybody knowing how I was doing it.

And if you're Irish Catholic in South Bend, IN, there is one disguise you can put on. And I did that. I went to the seminary and studied to be a priest at Notre Dame. And I was there for 2 1/2 years, 20 hours of silence a day from the ages of 14 through 16, trying not to think about girls.

Finally I said what an order. I can't go through with it.

And I came, I came back and I got drunk the next night. I got drunk the very next night. And six months later I had my first arrest, you know, and that first night, if if anybody had any objectivity, it would be clear that this is an alcoholic. But I knew

of thy experienced a number of my symptoms that very first night. I mean, I was shy, spiritual, quiet. You may not be able to tell by looking at me now, but I was small and

I had a few beers with these guys and I turned into a crazy person. I, I, I shattered the windshield of this one guy's car with the heel of my shoe, took out my shoe and battered his windshield in. I just, I got maniacal. I was just trying to kill somebody and it took three guys to subdue over 5-6 and 120.

And they did manage and they got me in the back of the car and put me on the floor. And two guys sat in the back seat and held me to the floor. And the third guy drove me home. And on the way home, I experienced another personality change. I just became warm and wonderful and I cried and I threw up on his floor.

And they got me to my house and they helped me out of the car and they helped me up to the front door and leaned me against the front door of my house like a thing and pushed the doorbell and ran because they didn't want to deal with my father. And my father opened the door and he was his oldest son at seminarian by one day, 16 years old, drunk.

And my father did the only thing he knew how to do. He punched me out. And that was my first night of serious drinking. And I loved it. I loved it. I never skipped a drink for the next 24 years for the best of my ability. So I was a spy and I always was. I, I went. I had that ambivalent thing

that Alcoholics do. I want to know what was wrong with me, but not really, you know, I mean a strange thing. I I was in therapy for three years in New York with a pretty expensive psychiatrist, and I was never late and I never missed an appointment and I never told him the truth.

You know, I didn't really want to know. And so here Dad was telling me about his life and suddenly it occurred to me

that this guy was another spy. I mean, he was, he knew what it felt like to be me at 3:00 AM. I thought nobody knew that. I thought nobody knew the thoughts that went through my head. And he knew he was talking about himself. And so that impressed me. I, I wasn't, I wasn't all impressed with his length of sobriety or any of that because I knew that was out of the question for me. But I did see that this truly was a kindred

and, and so I did pay a little attention to some of the things he said. He got me to do some stuff and he got me to make a promise. I hadn't made a promise in years because I don't keep them. So I just stopped giving them. And he made me promise that I would read the book Alcoholics Anonymous before I took another drink. And I said I would. He also convinced me to stay there that night in the detox center where he had a little help from Gene that that night. I mean, he, he wanted me to do it, but she had control of the keys

only car and she had all the money. So I knew if I didn't agree to stay there, I was going to have to walk back home from Oxnard, you know, figure what the hell, I'll stay there. And the next day they moved me out to a 12 step house. And at 11:00 in the morning, I was standing underneath the palm tree in Oxnard, and I had just successfully completed the A A program.

No. Yeah. Well, he explained a word he said you do it one day at a time

and I had just done that. I had been an entire day, 24 hour period without having any booze or dope

and I didn't like it.

And I decided to resign from your organization.

And I mean, and she was not going to come back and get me. I knew that. And I had she neglected to leave me any money. So that meant I was going to have to walk or hitchhike. And when I finally got there, I was going to have to boost a bottle or Panhandle. I mean, I could see it was going to be a long day, you know what I mean?

And I wanted to discharge my obligation. So I went back into that place and I found a big book. And I said, OK, I'm going to do what I told this guy, said I would read before I took the drink. And so I started to do that. And I need to tell you that by then, of course, most of my symptoms were rampant. And one of my symptoms is that I had become, over the years, I had become an intellectual.

I now define an intellectual as someone who has been educated beyond his capacity,

that in those days it was a very serious matter for me. It was a desperate effort on my part to gain some control. If I could understand the nature of the human psyche or the universe, maybe I could gain some control. And I've been out of control since I was 16 years old.

And it was also an effort on my part to impress you. I desperately needed to impress you because I had been filled with self loathing and and a deep sense of inadequacy since I was four years old. The only relief I ever got was when I impressed you. And so I used the intellectuality in an effort to impress you. And with all that going on, I picked up the book and I opened it and I immediately saw that it did not meet my literary standard.

It was a book that plain spoken and I thought simple minded, could hardly be of any use to somebody of my complexity.

I mean, I found things in there to ridicule. There's a line, you can look it up. It suggests that I should substitute for my drinking. I gave you a little hint of my drinking. I should substitute for my drinking. The fellowship. That's not going to work, folks. I mean, let's start with the fact that I don't like people, OK? I mean, hanging out with you is hardly going to keep me sober.

I mean, I didn't even like the word fellowship.

Sounded to me like a Baptist softball team. I don't want to be part of your fellowship. Thanks a lot. And I could see through that book stable efforts to hide its real intent behind euphemisms like higher power. That book was trying to cram God down my throat,

and I did not believe in God, and I didn't think you should either. One of my little entertainments in those days was to go to bars named Molly Malone's or Barney's Beanery and find some big Irish Catholic and get him into a discussion. I say, do you believe in God? He'd say, Oh yeah, I'd say a loving, just and merciful God, right, if you're right.

So yeah, what about malformed children and disease and war and poverty and bigotry and death?

Where's your loving God? Usually about then they would beat me up to show me there was a power greater than myself.

And that was the attitude with which I read the book. And in spite of my attitude, when I got to pay 21 of that book, for the first time ever, I discovered what was the matter with me. And I had been willing to accept the diagnosis of all kinds. I mean, I've been willing to be called paranoid schizophrenic or manic depressive, psychopath, sociopaths,

artist, any of those diagnosis. And on page 21 of the book, it described what it called a real alcoholic. It says they're seldom mildly intoxicated, usually more or less insanely drunk. It says they do absurd, tragic, incredible things. It says they're disgustingly, even dangerously antisocial. It talks about the Jekyll and Hyde personality and our lousy timings

all in one paragraph.

By the time I completed that paragraph, it was clear that's I'm an alcoholic.

I actually am, That's what's the matter with me. And I read the book then with a little more attention, when I got to page 24, it said that I will drink again. And it's very clear that says the real alcoholic has lost the power to choose whether they will drink or not. They have no mental defense against the first drink.

So I I was hallucinating, but I was never stupid. I can figure that out. That means I'm going to drink. And when I do, I'm going to relive page 21 over and over again. I thought it was a hopeless moment for me. What the hell am I going to do? I can't do what you suggest. You know, all this stuff was in a chapter called There is a Solution. Let's see. The solution didn't apply to me. I can't work those steps.

I thought, what the hell can I do? I said, OK, one thing I could do, I'll go to their meetings.

I'm not going to like it and I'll go. And so I did the very next night, on Wednesday night, I went to my first meeting and I loved the meeting from the beginning. I just loved the meeting. I liked the speaker meetings especially. I like to hear the adventure stories. You know this one guy got, he said I stole a battleship. Now you got to like a guy like that. I

've been thinking lately, how would you like to have an oil spill on your immense list?

Let's see, there's mom and dad and Alaska.

So I like to meetings. I love the meeting, you know, and I listened for hints about how do you stay sober? How do you do that? And one of the hints that I got was get a sponsor. So I got a sponsor. And right after I got him, I realized that he didn't have enough education to deal with somebody in my complexity.

It's a little embarrassing, but I have to admit to you that I it's a little embarrassing, But I have to admit to you that I gave Fred Ellis the quiz to see if he was qualified to deal with me. I mean, I didn't actually tell him it was a test, but I asked him a kind of a complicated question about the psychological interrelatedness of the step. Let's see how he does with that.

And Fred looked at me with these huge gentle eyes,

and he suggests the steps are numbered for the intellectuals.

If you will do them in order, they will work. I thought there was a pretty good answer. So I didn't fire him, you know. And in fact, in a just a couple of days, I got enough

courage and trust in Fred to tell him the truth. And I said the truth is it can't work the steps. The truth is, I can't

come to believe that there is a power that will restore me. And Fred answered me. He always did. The only thing is his answers never seem to match my questions. You know, it was just. But he did answer, I,

I give you the answer, an example of that kind of

confusion that he always caused in me when I was about 3 months over, I had a fight with Gene and I called him and I just, I in great detail, I enumerated all of the unforgivable things that she has said to me in that, in that fight, all of the rotten names she called me. I made it very clear to him what a bitch I was married to, you know, and I was only three months over. I knew what he was going to say. He, I knew he would say, Gee, you know,

you're only sober a little while. Maybe you should get out of that house for a while. And instead, what he said is all right, here's what you do.

You go to her and you say I am a sick son of a bitch, but I'm trying.

I said. Fred, I don't think you heard what I told.

And he said, no, I got it. I mean, I did. I I told him again just to be sure. And he said no, no, no, I got you. Do what I said. And I didn't want to drink and I was trying to follow his guidance. So I did. I went out the kitchen. I found her there at the kitchen with her back to me slamming pots. She used to call that washing the dishes. And I stood there behind her and I

tried to say what Fred had told me to say, and my throat closed. I wanted to, said I just couldn't do it. And finally I gave up. I went into the dining room, and I found it, put the paper, and I wrote it out on a slip of paper, you know, and flipped it into her Al Anon book. I mean, it was the best I could do. And give you an idea of the kind of program Gene was working at the time. It took her three weeks to find it.

Well, I must have known I felt better. I did. And on this occasion I was talking to friends and I can't work the second step. And he said one of his answers, you know, he said, well,

God comes to me through other people. Go to the meetings and search for God. Oh, terrific, Fred. Yeah, that's what I'll do. Good, good, good, good, good. I don't know what the Of course God comes to him through other people. How else would Fred get it? The man hardly reads.

If if God were to come to me, it would have to be, I think, in a white light on a mountaintop, you know. But I didn't want to drink and I was falling his direction. So I did what he said. I went to the meetings and I searched for God. I didn't find him, but I looked and

I know this is a misperception, but it did seem to me like everyone of the speakers that I heard during that search for God period or each had about a third grade education. They all got sober in Tyler, TX and they were dispensing folk wisdom. This one guy got up, I swear to you, and he said

if you don't believe in the power which is greater than yourself, then jump up and stay there.

What the hell is that? I didn't think that was funny. I'm sitting out there trying to find God and this guy is telling me that gravity will restore me to sanity.

I don't see how that's going to work. That's the only thing I could really hold on to is something else that Fred and said and that is no matter what he said, no matter what, don't use, don't drink. And I said okay. And I made list of no matter what, if those four children never speak to me again, I will not use your drink. No matter what. No matter what,

if I never am able to work again, I will not use the grain. No matter what,

if my mind is never restored to me, I will not use. I will not drink. And it took me 90 days to memorize the Serenity Prayer. I just couldn't hold it my hand and my hallucinations did not disappear. The day I got sober. I remember sitting next to Fred on a real hot August night and a huge black bug came flying right at me and then darted between my sponsor and me and we ended up looking at each other. I didn't say anything.

The first thing it was said, Fred said. He looked at me and he said it was really there, Jack.

I didn't ask him. You know, I'd be,

I'd be damned if I'd asked him, but I was pleased to hear.

So I said no matter what, no matter what, if my wife of 17 years goes through with her plan to divorce me, I will not use. I will not drink. If she stays. I will not use. I will not,

no matter what.

And when I was 30 days clean and sober, I had a spiritual experience

consisted of being 30 days clean and sober. So I really can't do that. And I knew it. I can't do that. I never did. I, I just can't. The closest I ever came one time in New York, Gene through conjugary and threats and everything begging, managed to get me to stop drinking for three weeks. And it took an enormous quantity of cocaine and grass to get me through those three weeks and I never tried it again. You know, that's it. And

so here I was, 30 days clean and sober,

and I knew it was not possible. And that is a spiritual experience precisely as it is described in that most profound of books, Alcoholics Anonymous in her other obscure section of our book called Appendix 2, where it says we tapped an unsuspected inner resource which we presently came to identify with our own conception of a power greater than ourselves.

Some of our religious minded members call that God conscious. And I had capped an unsuspected inner resource that made it possible for me to stay sober and incredible length of time, 30 days in a row couldn't get over. And I went to Fred. I said, you know, I think I'm working the second step. He wasn't all head and breast. He said, fine, go ahead and work the third step.

And I did and I have been doing that ever since, working a step, practicing the principles to the best of my ability.

And, and that, and that's been for 23 days and three months and 19 years. And who could expect that? You know, I had no idea that that was going to happen. And, and there are new people here, those who raised their hands or stood up and those who didn't. And let me just say that a, A isn't really about not drinking. It isn't about teaching you how to not drink.

It isn't about that. And if you're new and if you try to get some advice, you've already found that out.

And if you go to an old timer net, 'cause you know, how do I stop drinking? We say brilliant things like, well, don't pick up the first drink. Oh good, I hadn't thought of that.

AA isn't about not drinking. AA is about living sober. What's the difference? We don't work the steps in order to stop drinking. We stop drinking and then it is necessary to work the steps. I mean,

so Fred began to walk me through and to teach me about living, and I didn't know very much about it.

One of the things he said is just it is required if you want to stay sober, you have to be rigorously honest. And I said, OK, well, I'll do that. He said, you don't even know what it means. I said, wait a minute. Now, God damn it. I went to Notre Dame. I graduated. I went to Graduate School in Columbia at Fordham. I've been trained in psychology by the government when I was in the Army. And you barely got out of high school.

And he said, this is what honesty means

when your mind, your mouth and your behavior coincide. I said, oh, I didn't know that. I never did know that. And he said you need to be rigorously honest. And in your case, you're married. That means you have to be faithful. And I said, I didn't know that. No, no, no, I can't do that. I mean, I had been unfaithful in that relationship for the entire 17 years to the best of my ability. You understand. And he said, no, no, no, it doesn't work like that.

You have to be faithful in that marriage. And it's not being faithful to the woman, It's being faithful to the promise you made. And I said, but further, I mean, I don't even know if I love her. And he said, oh, no, no, you don't love her. I said, what are you talking about? He said, no, you don't know how to love. We're going to teach you that here. And in your case, we will start with politeness.

If she cooks, say thank you. Can you handle that? And I'll have to, well, I'll try, you know,

and, and I started to try and I, and I stayed faithful. And one of the reasons I bring this up is amazing things have happened, including that it has worked when I'm willing to do what AA asked me to do in order to stay sober.

It's work. I'm still here. But also there have been gifts over and above that I never expected and you know, and when I was about.

Three years sober, I called Fred to complain. I said, you know, I've been doing what you tell me and it's working. I'm still here. But she still does not trust me. And we're together now 20 years. And he said, well, let's figure out how long did it take you to teach her not to trust you?

We figured it was 17 years. So he said, fine, when you get 17 years clean and sober and faithful, then the score will be even.

I said, thanks a lot, you know? And I kept on going. And as I did, it dawned on me somewhere along the line that in those first 17 years, I had essentially this one experience with a variety of women. And in the last over 19 years, I've had a variety of experiences with one woman. And I found out that's better.

I just found out it's better.

It is more interesting, more adventurous. It's better. It's just better. Fred died. It'll be four years ago in March, so he wasn't here to see it. But when I was 17 years clean and sober and faithful, my wife gave me a little medallion that I wear around my neck. It says 17 even.

You know, we're still together. It's 36 years, you know, and it's, it's an amazing thing how, how it works. You know, instead, Fred kept trying to teach me how to, to live. And he, he told me that I had to listen to my I, I had to learn what I was thinking when I wasn't thinking, I said, what is that? He said. There is an automatic there's a radio station in your head that is always on 24 hours.

It's broadcast misinformation lives and propaganda, and you don't even know it's there. And you are responding to it without even knowing it. And so he taught me to start to listen to the sounds in my head. And it was an incredible experience. I called that radio station KVOE. That's the voice of the ego. And I have a list of some of the things it says we could add to this list. You and I audience an item.

But some of the things in that I've heard are.

I can't remember names. You can't trust anyone. It's gonna be another one of those days. I just can't handle it. It's just no use. I just know it won't work. Nothing ever goes right for me. That's just my luck. I'm so clumsy. I don't have the talent. I'm just not creative. Everything I eat goes right to my way. I just can't seem to get organized. Today just isn't my day. I can never afford the things I want. I already know I won't like it. I never have enough time. No matter what I do, I can't seem to lose weight. I'm always