John "The Indian" V. from Berlin Massachusettes at Omaha Nebraska

Talking about wild Indians,

I want to thank you for those nice words.

Now I wish my wife was here.

I met Kathy Naa

about 24 years ago. We got married and

we have six children,

seven years.

Something to be said about being compulsive, I suppose.

But I liked it.

My oldest daughter, she's in the program.

Thanksgiving dinner she came over

and telling my wife that she had tickets to see Ken Rogers and Charlie Parton

because I have a choice. I told my wife she has a choice, either in me or Ken Rogers.

That's why I'm alone tonight.

But I'm the one that called John the Indian

and I like that.

I I've heard a lot this weekend. I think that

among other things that I learned to enjoy in the program

is to be able to see myself in other people,

to identify and to understand.

I enjoyed

my friend Jack Friday night, last night. I don't know if you identified a story told about, I think. I think you understood rather than identifying the story told about that 85 year old man.

I don't think you're old enough to identify with that. But

not only you understood it, but I think you liked it.

I know I did too. I have a friend at home.

He's the type of fellow who shares everything and the other night he was talking about this first sex experience,

said he liked it.

He was at home and he was alone.

I don't know if you identify with that.

I think is the

it's a wonderful thing to be able to look back in your own life and to realize

just how grateful you are.

Somebody mentioned about time that some of us don't like in AA.

Time is reality and

the God's way of telling us that not everything happens all at once.

But time is a beautiful thing because in a you do learn

from your friends. You get some insight about yourself

to get some understanding about the illness of alcoholism.

You learn something about prayer. And I have been fortunate enough that I have been given kind in A to learn all these things. And when I look back tonight,

realized that I'm a lucky person.

I have a lot to be grateful for. There have been

some special people in my life, I know that, who took time

to help me. Those days when I really needed help and I didn't know how to receive it. One of them was a lawyer.

I met him

or back in 1957.

I was in a mission that night because I lived in Mosquito for almost eight years.

I was sober and a bomb came to see me in the mission

and he asked me if I wanted to go to an A meeting. And I didn't know what an A A meeting was. And I didn't want to go anyplace because I wasn't dressed and I needed a haircut. And I have always suffered from wine storage and that usually took me about six weeks before my face would clear up.

And when I'm in this condition,

I don't want anyone to see me,

so I didn't want to come to A, he said. Well, you know, they have coffee and Donuts and they're free.

So I said we'll go.

I walked into the central group. Central Group This meeting, like this one,

mixed people from different walks of life.

The man who stood at the door that night was a lawyer,

and that's what he did every Friday night. It's the doctor door. And he would shake hands to everyone who came to that meeting, and he would do the same thing after the meeting. He would shake hands to everyone who was leaving

and as I was walking through the doors of AA he grabbed my hand and he says to me

that he was glad to see me

and I wasn't glad to see him at all.

But the only thing I could see was the way I looked,

the way I felt,

and I sit down and my first speaker in AA was a lady judge

and I never even knew judge strength.

The ones I it isn't that I never met one of them before.

I met 143 times

and he never once asked me to try to identify

and she got my mind all screwed up and all I want to do is get my Donuts and get the hell out of there.

But there was this lawyer,

and that's what I'm grateful for.

I'm grateful that he understood

because when you're a bomb

and when you have a long hair and wine stores, you know you don't look too well.

Not too many people

put his arms around you, even people in AAA.

Maybe because it's human nature.

Years later, going to step meeting one day I was listening to someone reading the 11th step of prayer of Saint Francis and he was saying, Lord, I pray that I may understand

rather than to be understood. Every time I hear that, I remember the lawyer. I guess that's what the kind of person who will put around to a bomb

is, the person who has that understanding.

Of course, I didn't know anything about it. I was leaving because I didn't belong there.

And as I was leaving, he stopped me. And he says, you know, before you leave, why don't you meet some of my friends?

And I think what touched me, and I think that listening to different speakers this weekend, it seems that God works the way it works. You think that we're all different and that he touched us in the way that he does.

What touched me was that I felt

I was wanted here

and

people really took interest in me. I liked it

and that's what

allowed me to come back and and I needed to come back. I needed to learn what I have learned in those years in the program.

Cause like someone was saying, I never knew that I was a sick person. And people that I have met

those seven years that I drank, nobody ever said, John, you know, you're sick.

That said, other things

like the judge. One time

I was facing the judge, one time he said John. Now he calls me John. That's the man I met 43 times. He wasn't a friend, but he calls me John,

he says to Fayette Park in the city of Syracuse,

where you picked up last night. That's for the decent people to go there on Sunday.

It's not for people like you

and because the way I felt about myself, I believe that.

And one of the things I'm grateful for is I don't feel the way about that about myself tonight.

I really enjoyed being here. I feel kind of proud that I can stand up here and share my life. Or maybe I feel grateful.

I don't particularly like the idea of traveling on a jet. I've been having problems lately.

I was on a jet not too long ago and the captain said I don't want to discourage anyone, but we lost one engine.

I said I'm discouraged,

shouldn't have told me that

the next trip I took we got hit by the Thunder or something, you know, and every time anything happens, you know, I start saying, God grant me to Serenity and and the captain came over and looked up the wing and said, I guess we're all right. Well, I wasn't

at all.

Then I was going to Alaska. Somebody invited me to go to Alaska.

In Chicago, I spent five hours because they find out the generator,

something happens to the generator. They're supposed to keep this motor going

this weekend.

I'm in Minneapolis, one hour going around up there

and all I could think about was my kit would say Don home. Just carrying the message sucks,

but I'm glad I'm here.

I want to thank you for that fruit basket you've given me and wonderful dinner that it didn't cost me anything tonight.

Taste of good. I got a king size bed that I really don't need all of it.

So if anybody looking for a bed

at 3:00,

we can sit on and talk about what it used to be, life,

what happened

and what he's like today.

I'm, I'm as you probably know by now, I'm I'm a Canadian.

I was brought up in a

model reservation in Canada,

and like so many of us,

my father liked to drink.

When he died,

we, our family, got sick. We lost

eight members in my family in five years or my family died with TV.

My mother

died with TB2 when I was 13, and I shared it because

I had a lot of fears in life. I had, you know, people, Alcoholics sometimes talk about wanting to commit suicide. I never entered in my mind. I was always afraid in those days that I was going to die. I felt,

I felt I was treated like if I had TB.

And one of the things I've learned in my recovery that I'm, I have a tendency of suffering from what you people call an obsession,

a fear. To me, it's it's

got something to me and I couldn't forget. I mean, I couldn't sleep.

I was sleeping with my mother. And I asked her one morning if I was going to die and you know, if she was dying, but I thought I was too. And she said that that I was very strong and that I was different and she should have never said that.

And she was very proud of me.

And when my mother died, I I didn't look for a home because my post I wasn't wanted. So I lived in an all empty house for about a year.

But it's but you know, I've learned you learn a lot in recovery

and insight is healthy

and God make us that way.

I learned that I I'm the type of person who seeks rejections,

and that's a hard thing to overcome.

And it goes back even in my own home with my own people. I can understand when people said I felt alone. I did too, but it wasn't because of my people.

I choose to live in this old empty house with a dog and I couldn't sleep. I had a lot of problems. I I discovered

in at when I was about 14 years old that if I started to pretend

that I'm somebody else,

I could find some comfort

and I could fall asleep.

So I have taught myself

as the years went by, to pretend that I am somewhere else,

that I lived in a big house and that I had a lot of nice clothes and

money and big car and a nice girl. Hell, are you going to dream?

Doesn't cause any more to pile it up.

I learned to relax. I was 14 years old.

You know, it's really,

it's really worth kind of a thickness

when you start denying yourself from who you are.

In a time in my life when I didn't even did anything bad,

I have done nothing to be ashamed of,

nothing to feel guilty about.

I had all those things that I brought into a program. I think that's why when Bill Wilson wrote the steps, he knew some words that he said Indian.

It's all screwed up.

He needs to sit down one day and take his own inventory.

You need to find someone for one senators life and tell the truth about who he is.

Maybe if I can do that, I would stop

wishing

that I should be somebody else.

I bring this up because if you knew, and if you don't know,

escape its comfort,

but escaped denying yourself from who you are,

denying yourself from who you are, you never grow.

You can't get any place,

but God didn't make you for you to deny yourself.

God made you for you to have strength, to make a decision and to have choice

and to be be effective, to be proud of yourself, to trust yourself, to be able to love, to be able to be grateful. So many things that we can do. I know nothing about it.

My people

worked in lumber camps in Maine,

so I left home when I was 14 and I arrived in Patton, Maine, and

I wanted a job in woods. But the fellow said I was too skinny, too young, and it was against the law to hire kids. He said the CC camp was 20 some miles in the woods and then needed a dishwasher because the Army, the Second World War, a lot of people were joining me and they needed help. So I walked and I I arrived there and I met a man by the name of Bill Langster.

He gave me a job and I was with him for four years

when I was 18 years old.

Yeah, well, there some people suggested that I could join a younger people,

that I needed to be with younger people.

Well, I I thought that I would join the Army,

then go back to my own, my home and show my people that are now I'm a soldier and I have grown.

What I didn't know was that if you cannot read and write in Canadian Army, you're not allowed to go on training.

I joined the Canadian infantry in Quebec City, of all the places, all French, and I don't talk to him.

And they gave me a job washing dishes.

Now I don't mind washing dishes in lumber camp.

But in the army, he told me that I wasn't as good as the next person.

That's one of my problems for so many years.

What is it in our recovery? The second step

of all places. Second step talks about leaving.

He identified fate as the spirit of independence.

Wilson said

A person without faith is one who seeks approval.

You live on what other people think about you.

You will go as far as to tell lies about yourself just to be accepted.

Boy, would I identify with that,

Safety said. It's the spirit of independence.

You know, when I was over five years, I was still in Skids and I was sleeping in a men's room in a hotel in Marlborough. I just arrived here 1:00 in the morning. I was 33 years old by this time

and if you came to me that night and say, John, what is your problem? At the age of 33, five years, so over when I would tell you, you know, I'm an Indian

and you know, if you have a problem with Indian, you got one because you're going to be one rest of your life.

Second thing is, you know, I can't read and write.

I'm just an unfortunate person. I never had a break, Bill Wilson said.

One will rationalize and testify. The list is long

if if I had a nice girl

and if I have a night home

and a nice car

and my new set of teeth. Because by that time I lost four of them.

I met one that I couldn't communicate to well with

and if I had money, if I had all these things, I wouldn't feel the way I do. You know an amazing thing is when you have that type of sickness night after night, you said next to a person

who has a home,

who has a nice wife,

who has money,

who has a nice clothes, who has a nice car. What you don't know

that you both feel the same way?

Its rationalization is different. It probably says that bitch I live with.

Anyone living with that bitch would feel the way I do.

Alright, the bot.

They don't care how hot I work.

But I never could see it.

Can you imagine if someone came to me when I first came to Way A and say, John, you stay sober

and one day you will receive the call from Omaha, NE.

They won't pay your expenses,

you'll have a king size bed, they will take you out. But most of all,

you can stand up there and you wouldn't be ashamed because you don't have an education

or because you don't talk with English.

Can you imagine if someone came to me that night and say John one day, you live in a 14 room house?

Not too long ago I bought my wife a Chrysler

5th Ave.,

not 4th. 5th Ave.

said $18,000.

My wife just find a job. You know, she's like me, she doesn't have a talent, so she's got a job. She gets paid $4.50 now

it suckles me to think that she arrives with $18,000 automobile.

The Army was very difficult for me.

Guys, I'm I'm truly an upset person.

Washing dishes for me wasn't. It was an obsession.

I told lies about it,

that you couldn't tell a girl

you know you're washing dishes.

Why couldn't you?

If you believe the truth is more honorable than life?

If you believe that the truth doesn't disarm you

being a great person,

but I think just backwards.

I wouldn't go home to my people,

but I I didn't want them to know. See, I have I lost the brother in war

and I didn't want anybody to know that I was walking busy,

so I don't either mountain.

What really what I really wanted was a drink,

but I wouldn't drink because you've heard it in AI didn't want to be like my father.

So I didn't drink until I was 21 years old. I was with a follow to come around to get her a long time.

He was a farmer.

This lady is a farmer. Only this guy wasn't a farmer. He wanted to be one.

I mean, that's all he talked about.

Every time we go out, you talk one time, one time you and I decided we're 18 years old, so we decided. Someone said that in Saint Lawrence St. In Montreal you can go over there if you have money and fix the girl that you like

and have fun.

So we save our money and we got all dressed up so we look good

in case they wouldn't like us, you know.

So we went over to Saint Lawrence St. where you can fix the girls and we stood there

and we stood and we stood longer than most girls did.

That's the kind we were be trying to convince each other which one should go and ask. Finally he did and he came back. He was all upset and he said, John, you wouldn't believe I said 16125 dollars,

what's wrong? We got a lot of money. He said John, you don't understand. He said Don home, you can buy a house, $25.

Now that's a farmer, right?

That's an obsession.

We got our discharge and he says to me what you say. We buy suits and we'll have a few drinks and we'll meet some girls and I thought it was a good idea,

so he brought us. He brought it. We went to Blurry Cafe in Montreal and the third floor you walk in and

four piece orchestra playing and in front that there was a girl singing practically with no clothes on.

And I think that's where I received my first spiritual experience.

But then I took a drink.

I like drinking.

I really don't understand too much about drinking. Some people tell us we drink. Pretty effect. I suppose we do,

but I needed a drink

or I like drinking because

but I for one thing, I can get close to people and I'm not a even today

I realized the value of being able to be open and share your life.

To me, it's a very slow process in life.

I'm sure I'm much better than what I used to be,

but I like, I enjoy drinking because I can get very close to people.

I enjoyed not being afraid

what people might think about me. I suppose

it was some kind of a freedom that I have never had.

I like that my. But the other fight I like too is I like to be crazy.

I enjoy, I enjoy being able to be crazy. I can't do that sober because I'm so sensitive of being intelligent

and I can't stand anyone who is stupid

or ignorant. It bothers me,

but that's not what really bothers me.

What bothers me is I have trouble what Saint Francis talks about,

what the lawyer had. I have trouble saying, Lord, I pray that I may understand rather than to be understood. Or did I accept rather than control?

When you control, you destroy a relationship. When you accept you put us together,

but your control when intellect

but relationship with spiritual

that's not intellectual. It is not a question you're right or wrong.

Question is, in this life there is something greater than what is right and what is wrong,

and that is the ability to be able to accept.

You know that lawyer, it is so important

at liar who put his arms around me when I myself

didn't know I belonged here.

It wasn't enough to bring me back.

Another thing I like about drinking

because I can be, I can accept, and I'm crazy, I suppose. I like falling in love every night,

you know? I look at this girl and she's the most beautiful thing you ever seen. You think she is,

but not necessarily so, because alcohol also affects your vision. You know,

you wake up in the morning, you say, holy Christ,

you were so cute last night. Like, you know, you take a drink and you love all over again. And I love that.

I love to be that crazy.

I love fight.

I love fighting

because I get bored. I can be in a bar room drinking I and I look around and I'm bored

and I'll spot someone that I don't like the way he looks.

A few more drinks than I will approach.

I don't like you,

Johnny said. I don't want any problem, I said. Too damn bad you don't get it anyway.

I love that. And then they would call a cop

and everybody thinks that's when I supposed to leave.

But then that's when just the fun starts.

This guy, which is opens the door for me, his cop is going to find out what they're dealing with

and when they get to know you, they come three or four. That's even better,

and it's fun

even in the court. That's fine.

I remember 1 morning I was in the court and this big fat policeman

came over and he hold his pants. The leg was missing.

Everybody in the court laughs,

Judge laughed. So I laughed too.

It's fun until he gave me 6 months, then

it wasn't fun anymore. Everybody was laughing but me.

But alcoholism, it gets worse, and the day comes when you don't fall in love every night anymore.

No more fight,

you don't get post people anymore.

He doesn't do anything

and you can't stop. I knew I couldn't stop. I also knew it was first string.

I have known that for years, but I never knew that I was powerless over wondering. And I didn't know I was an alcoholic, but I've always known that once I took a drink, I never stopped

when I was asked to come here.

I know it was probably

one of many important days in my life,

but I came here because I was hungry.

I needed a donut. Free coffee.

I came back. The second important person I met was my sponsor. Pass. Now I knew Pat.

I never liked that

he was a bum longer than I am. He had a degree. I used to say there is nothing worse than a bum with a degree

unbeknown to us. Then periodically, Pat would disappear from the kids.

Sometimes six months he would be gone.

Hey, you joined a When I met Pat, I was in, so I was in Central Group. One night he walked in all dressed up and he comes to me and he said, John, I'm your sponsor,

that I have a new car outside,

10 years to pick me up every night and used to bring me to a meeting and sometimes she would bring me a sandwich.

Used to say can only eat half of them.

And I don't know what's going on, you know,

because I think sometimes we're so into ourselves, it's like a one big obsession that we really don't see

what's going on.

I never really cared

that Pat picked me up every night.

It was years later when someone once said you ever stop and think that Pat never eats sandwiches

and someday, if you're lucky enough, you stand up here and you brag about $18,000 Chrysler

Knight's hotel room

feeling good about yourself.

To be able to learn and identify with the speaker.

To be able to tell a joke and laugh.

But it's so important to realize where does it come from?

It is so real to know that there have been people in my life who took time to help me when I didn't even know that I needed help, When there was no gratitude in my life. There is no question

that there is such thing, but Saint Francis talked about

that. You and I are very, very capable of understanding

rather than wanting to be understood,

and we are very capable of buying a family. Bring it to a person

who doesn't even know that he needs help.

That is a very healthy state of mind to walk with in this world of ours. We got to get away from ourselves, among other things that Saint Francis said.

For it is in self forgetting

that you find

I stopped at noontime meeting Thanksgiving.

It is the dropping center and people come over there and they bring Turkey. It was a big they had a meeting 10:00 and there was this big guy sitting there, weighs 200 or so.

He was sad, he said. I just came to my father and my mother. I went there today, he said.

I had all the intentions to hug my father.

We have not done that, he said. Since I can remember,

I wasn't sure I could hug my father, he said.

But I was pretty sure that I could hug my mother,

but I said I just couldn't do it.

And I was sitting there

and I can identify with that.

I don't know what it's worth

when you have father and mother that you cannot hug

or when you don't have them,

but we all have

of panels that we have to live with,

some lady said today. If you are a parent,

when you go home you make make a point that you tell your daughters and sons that you love them.

But I see an awful lot of sons and God is sitting here.

What about you when you go home and tell your father and mother that you loved him?

What the hell you think is 1 sided?

I have six children.

I call him an Indian hug. I give him an Indian hug there. Bring somebody home, he says. Daddy, give her an Indian hug. Once I gave him a hug. They don't want it anymore because I squeeze them today.

Yes, love is important.

But you don't have to be perfect to be able to love

like you do. You need to be sober six months to be able to love.

You have to get wealth first.

You have to be right first,

then, Francis said. You're born with gift that God gave you. You have right to choose. You wish to love,

that is. You're right.

And if you want love,

you'll die.

I remember when I first get married, you know, I was 35 years old and, you know, I never had a relationship. I, I never lived with anyone. I wasn't in no condition

where you want to bring a girl when you leave in Skip.

I didn't even have a chance to have trouble with somebody elses wife.

You know I was speaking with now and on and I don't say any word Alanon if I loved him but with an alnon anniversary and this lady a long speaker. She keeps saying I never woke up with strange men instead of two or three times I thought she was complaining.

I get up and I said I've always woke up with strange women

and I liked it. It could have been somebody else that I wouldn't like it.

You know,

my sponsor,

he had a habit of not being there on time.

And that used to burn me

15 minutes late and I would be so mad. I wouldn't go with him.

I walk. I mean, it's not easy to help a person. Like I didn't know I was perfectionist.

I was 40 years old when I discovered I was perfected.

If you see me laying in a sidewalk with long hair, wine stores and dirty, would you say this guys perfectionist

is a perfectionist?

When someone once told me I was perfectionist, I was glad he sounded so.

I never thought how much problem it got me.

17 years later, you know my sponsor to the drink

and he died.

Call me up. One time it was in Buffalo, NY,

John says. I'm in trouble. I drank,

so I said to my wife, you know, the man helped me an awful lot. I'm going to see if I can find him.

I found him.

I was living in Marlborough, Mass, at the time,

and you know, by this time I had cars and I was doing all right, He said to me, John, I almost died,

had danced up, almost killed me.

So I brought him to Syracuse because he wanted to go over there,

took a drink in Syracuse and he died in West Street.

This is where you man, I used to exchange flows.

When somebody called me up one night and he said, you know, Pat died.

All I could think of was what he told me a few months ago and he said John A dancing almost killed me.

But he taught me something, Pat,

you know,

I guess what it taught me was that someday this Indian wouldn't be a bum anymore.

And someday I live in the 14 room house and I'll have a car and price. I even pay taxes,

and it's not easy when you know that this country was ours before it was yours.

Someday when I have all these things, they'll be

maybe someone

who comes to see me.

Like, you know, it's quite a thing to be able to be invited.

It feels good when your opinion is honored from your follow man,

knowing that something you cannot buy,

that it is not something that somebody gives you,

not a kit,

but it's something that you have decided to choose

in your own life.

People would honor your opinion if you honor your own beautiful thing

someday, instead of being a bum looking for help, there's always another one

comes along and said, John,

you think you could help me?

And all you can think about is that sponsor

somebody who taught you the value of love,

someone who stopped the car and buy a sandwich for a bum who lives in a mission.

They come up every night when it's not even grateful,

when he's mad because you're late

one day. When you learn to get well, you learn to put pieces together

and the value is

at one day you share the same things to another person.

You know

to pass it on

and to some extent I do that. I never do anything well the

but I go along.

When I arrived in Marlboro Mags, I was five years sober and I was in kid.

I met another important person in my life. I'm going to share this and I think it's late,

he says, John, there's a new meeting starting in that started in Worcester a week or so ago if you like to go. And he said sure.

And that was a step meaning. Now I knew there were steps in Syracuse, NY. Every meeting

they would reach the steps and traditions and 5th chapter. And you have any mind at all you can memorize these things. And I knew I knew what big chapter says. These are the steps we took which are suggested as the program of recovery. But I But they will have no step meetings in Syracuse, NY. Back in 57, there were no step meetings

and there were none in Massachusetts. That started this one father Fred, who was a good friend of mine who was still alive, Eddie D, who saw his newspaper report. It's over about 40 years. It was. There were a lot of people who knew something about what this was all about. And I walked in there and what they did was the pages of the steps,

like 6-7 pages. And that's the first time I've heard about the recovery. And then you have these people who would express their ideas, their insights

as to what step means to them. And of course, I was confused. I have never, never heard him before. I certainly didn't believe that night

that I need this program to recovery. I really believe what I told you. If I have a car and a girl in a home and a job and money, that I would be all right.

Because after all, you know, second step talks about coming to believe that there is a power greater than ourselves. You know, of course, if you believe, maybe you wouldn't look for approval. If you believe something, maybe you will learn that what you want cannot get from the outside, that no matter how much person loves you, you cannot give you. God didn't make you that cheap. God

gave you a choice, right for you to be able to choose for your life.

And if you don't choose,

you know,

and it seems to me

from that time I could remember

at the age of 13, sleeping between two mattresses, my greatest desire was

to be somebody else. And I find comfort

pretending that I'm somebody else. I could actually follically they

I have never find faith that something very comfortable.

I do understand today,

while maybe it is true, that faith is not that comfortable, it is the magic that allows you to go from where you are with what you have in life.

I was not capable of doing that when I

13, when I was 20, when I was, but I needed as I better, my better judgment was I needed people in a here. I needed the moral support. I needed the understanding. I needed to learn how to pray. I needed to learn how to believe

I needed all those things. And with that, it has been 29 years for me

and I'm just slowly growing every day.

Sometimes I walk when I don't feel good, I walk into my house. I looked around with my kids and you know what I said? You're a bunch of assholes.

You know why I know that? Because I am one myself.

It's beautiful when you know that nobody is perfect.