Ken D.

Hi, my name is Ken. I'm an alcoholic. I don't want to say you guys put much pressure on me, but you want me to tell my whole life story in 11 minutes and

and you don't want me to skip anything. And I had a sister, that hot dog story.

But I'm real glad to be here, glad to be sober,

and I thank the all the people involved with bringing me here and getting me around while I was here and had a chance to meet a lot of new people. And that's always fun and interesting. And I had a chance to see Goldine and Bob again, who I just met with in the last year, and that was real rewarding. And also Gene and Jill and Jerry, people I had met back in Omaha. So what I'm trying to say is I'm real happy to be here.

It's always nice to stand in front of one of these things and not have to enter a plea. I

wait, mate,

but if you, if you tend to be very intellectual, you can go to sleep right now because I got through school totally unsarred by education, you know,

I grew up with and got sober with guys. If you said there's a dead bird, we all looked up, you know?

Most of the guys in my neighborhood think that Moby Dick is a venereal disease, so it's

a buddy of mine was asked one time, how do you spell Mississippi? Said. You mean the river of the state you know?

We're, we're all totally unscathed by education.

And I come to these meetings and I, you get a chance to share

and it's very interesting what takes place. But because people hear stuff and when the meeting is over, they come up and they credit you with saying something you never said,

but it's going to change their life.

So you don't mind. You know, that's an alcoholic stream. You get credit for something that you never did,

so that's not too bad. But the flip side of that coin is every now and again, and I hope you're not here today, somebody will come up and credit you with something you never said. And on top of that, they disagree with it.

So you have to all listen from where you're at. And if I say anything that sounds out of context with what your sponsor said or you read in the book or whatever, I'm obviously wrong. OK,

So don't got to get me after the meeting because we have a plane to catch.

In fact, we hear all these words and we think we understand them. It's like a little kid. It was in Bible school. You just studied a big lesson

and the teacher said to him, trying to impress the minister.

Bob is gone,

but China impressed the minister. She called on this youngster and she said, John, what do they call them in the Christian world when a man can only have one wife? John stood up, looked at and said Monotony.

So we all hear differently

now. I don't know about the hereditary part of this disease. And I don't have to know. I just know that I'm the youngest in the family of seven kids. And we're divided into two groups. Either you're in a or you need it. You know

my mom said when she was alive.

The only time I ever heard one of your kids say no to a drink is if you misunderstood the question.

I was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, and

it was one of those neighborhoods where people would say, how far is it to the subway? And we'd shrug our shoulders and say we don't know. No one's ever made it, you know,

and there was no such thing as private property. If it was small, we took it.

If it was too big to take, we lay down next to it and try to claim it, you know,

and this is basically my background. And then I got to a a see how quickly I got there.

Time will do that.

But when I arrived in Alcoholics Anonymous, I went to my first meeting on April 5th, 1970 and through the grace of God and the fellowship of this program, I haven't found necessary take a drink since that time.

Now when I arrived in the Alcoholics and I my mom thought it was very she said, you know, that's great that your sobriety date is July 5th because you did everything on the 5th. But when I when I arrived in Alcoholics Anonymous, just to give you a thumbnail sketch of where I was at,

my wife and children, very wisely had moved out of state.

I was in the process of going to jail again. I had a habit of finding things before people officially lost them.

I look like I was in a gang war and my gang didn't show up. You know,

I had all the calls of the dog on the freeway

and my health was shot.

And I went into that meeting and I met a guy who was to be my sponsor.

It was July was New York with Hot and I was the only guy there in the shooting dust.

And somehow they intuitively knew I was a newcomer.

And he walked over and said first meeting.

And I said, boy, I tell you, these guys must know something.

And at that meeting, he made me feel welcome.

And they knew real well in New York, as they know in most Alcoholics meeting, that the newcomer, you have to have rabbits food before you have a rat and you have to have a rabbit before you have rabbit Stew. So you got to keep that newcomer coming back.

And one of the early things they did with me is they gave me an owner's manual look just like this.

And I never had an owners manual.

And every time something came up, they say check your owners manual.

And I started reading that owners manual and I read the first story in there about about Bill

and how he tried to do everything to stop drinking

and nothing worked.

And finally one time he was put into a hospital. And the day he came out of the hospital, he said to himself, surely this must be the answer. Self knowledge. In the book, there's a period and then the next sentence starts. But it was not. And if you read this book, the thing that will become hopefully painfully clear to you is the fact that you are not going to get well through your mind here with this disease.

And then

I jumped quickly into Chapter 2. In Chapter 2, they introduced a description of a real alcoholic

so that we would know when we meet one. You know, as if the world needed a description.

Now I don't know about how it works out here in Nebraska, I'm sure it's the same way. But back where I come from, both in New York and California, it comes down to if you don't know what an alcoholic looks like, all you have to do is listen. Because they only have 4 basic responses to any question that you ask.

When talking with an alcoholic, you'll hear four things no matter how clever they are. They may not all be used at once, but they'll be used. The first one is yes, but you know,

and the second one is you don't understand.

And the third one is I'm different. Now if they're real sick, they use a lot of that together. You don't understand I'm different. And then the last one you'll always hear is I know that

and you know they don't because if they did, they wouldn't do it.

And then in Chapter 3 it talks about more about alcoholism

and they put that chapter in there because it's the main chapter between 2:00 and 4:00. That's why they call it 3.

My parochial school general equivalency certificates begin to pay off.

But in that chapter, it's just a whole series of people thinking, thinking their way out of alcoholism. And it's one failure after another.

And to every form of experimentation and self deception. People try to think their way through the disease.

And then what happens is as a result of that, they come to the realization that they're always being LED back to incomprehensible demoralization over and over and over and over again. And in, in chapter 2, I, I should mention that in that chapter it also points out and there's a solution. It says there's a Riddle here and we don't know the answer to the Riddle. Can you imagine a A admitting to not knowing something

but it says why the alcoholic reacts differently from other people? We don't know.

We don't know why,

but what we do know is that if the alcoholic does not take alcohol, he tends to act much like other men. Therefore big sentence should be all capitals. The main problem of the alcoholic left in his mind rather than in his body. The three words you never want to hear an alcoholic say is I've been thinking,

you know.

You can just bet the word Moors in there several times

more of this, more of that. An alcoholic can take any solution and turn it into a problem.

You know, we go to, we go to a wedding, we want to be the bride,

We go to the funeral, we want to be the corpse. You know, there's always want to be at the center. You know, that's just our makeup. And when people come into Alcoholics Anonymous and observe the meeting,

they sometimes get the misconception that when people are sharing and we're laughing, we're laughing at their problems.

Nothing could be further from the truth. We never laugh at people's problems. We laugh at their solutions.

I always like it as though being shared when somebody's been married seven times and it's they're all ecstatic. They just got engaged

and it's like somehow it's going to be different. You know, this time it's going to be different. And so the deal is here as we get into then Chapter 4 and in Chapter 4, it talks about the great reality and it gives me the biggest promise that I'm given an alcoholic synonymous. I didn't realize it at first,

always talk about the promises and had me reading on other pages, but there's a big promise there and it talks about the spirituality of this program and it says if you can wash away all the prejudice that you have about God, two things will happen. Number one is you cannot sell an alcoholic synonym, not that you may not fail. Perhaps to guarantee you can not fail

and the next sentence

says the God of your consciousness will come to you. Not that it may come to you, it will come to you. And so that's a guarantee. And what you'll find out is that the people who stay here any amount of time will pick up on that guarantee. We have to have a spiritual program. The words in the book all lead up to it. If you look, it says things like we will be rocketed into the 4th dimension. We have to go there. If you've missed the trip, make reservations.

You know, because the mind we have can only think in three-dimensional things. We have to get out there in the 4th dimension. We'll intuitively know. Being unscarred by education. I looked up that word intuitively. It means to bypass the thought process. When Bambi's in the woods and he sees a man with a gun, he doesn't go through some big process. Like, I wonder if it's hunting season,

you know?

I wonder if that bozo can shoot, you know, Bambi Boogie.

That's intuitive thinking.

And it also says we will suddenly realize

just like that, you know, if you stay around here any amount of time, a lot of things will become painfully apparent to you that you'll wonder how you missed them when you first got here. But truth comes all at once. It doesn't come on the installment plan. One minute you're in darkness and the next minute you're in life. That's the way truth comes

all at once, and I can't give you truth and you can't give me truth. We can share our experience, strength, and hope, but truth has to be experience. See, it's not your truth until you experience it. Then you know it. And it doesn't seem to be absolute. It's absolute at the time, but it changes.

Not the truth changes, but what we know about it changes. And as we grow and become more spiritual, things begin to happen. And as gold being put me on the spot last night, she mentioned the fact that when somebody gets here, I always say if you go to meetings and hear people share, you'll hear them share this horrendous prologue of all the things that went wrong in their life. And then they'll say

something happened. And I went to an A, A meeting,

something happened. I was forced to an AAA meeting, Something happened. I was sentenced to an AAA meeting. You know, something happened. I was brought to an AA meeting. You know, whatever way it comes out, something happened. And that something happening is a spiritual experience. It's God intervening and saying I'm giving you a shot and you don't have to believe that.

I mean, I know you're dealing with a mind that couldn't accept that you're an alcoholic. Now to tell you that God intervened and send you to AA would completely blow you out of your seat. You know, I love it when people say I don't think so. You know, please, please. You know, I hung out with guys where we raced in pillage Brooklyn

and we didn't suddenly say, hey, this is getting out of hand. We better go to a a someone get a meeting list, you know, let's go. You know, this is

put that down. It's not ours, you know?

That's not what we did,

you know, We could move stuff in 15 minutes. That would take the Santini brothers a week, you know,

because we didn't have damage insurance, you know?

And then finally I arrived in chapter 5. How it works. You have the cost. It works. We read how it works. Just takes it out of it and put God there because God works how God works. This is a God deal.

And so I arrived there and the thing that became painfully apparent to me, and it didn't become painfully apparent in the first year, was the fact that I had grown up and I had lost track somewhere along the line of who I really was. And not wanting to be totally detached and being totally afraid all the time that I would have no identity, I made-up an identity. I developed an ego, and that ego was not real.

Its effects were real, but it was not real.

You guys told me if you take these steps, what will happen is your ego will dissipate, Won't go away. Got too much

though.

But it will dissipate because the thing that you'll find out is if you have an ego, it's fictional. And the one thing it cannot stand up to is fact. And as you take these steps, you get an an opportunity to introduce more and more fact into your life. And as you introduce more and more fact into your life, that ego tends to go away.

That's just the way it is. It's like fear. It's not real, but it's effects are real. And that's why Alcoholics sometimes go through. Not sometimes. Almost all the ones I know go through a life experience 10 times before they get to it. You know, my divorce is final in six months. What am I going to do for for a new house? Don't worry about it day before you divorce.

Why go through all these worst case scenarios? What happens in 92 if we get the wrong president?

Yeah, we've got So far so good.

I'm always amazed when people are afraid of screwing up. My new philosophy in life is be a verb. Don't be a noun, you know.

We got too many nouns in a a Be a bird, you know,

leap before you look

over with anyone, all you're going to get is their opinion.

Go in bed. By the time you get done vacillating and examining it, you could have tried it.

I know people that taste In three years, I'm I'm going to have to make a decision about this.

You ever have somebody in your group who was trying to make a decision and they say to you things like, well, I know I should change.

I've been praying about change, You know, talk to my sponsor about change. Went over his house

inventory changed.

When the hell are you going to change? You know,

I mean, why don't you just do it and then it will be done and

vacillation and thinking is what we do when we don't want to take action. I'm not opposed to people knowing mass so they can figure out change in the store. I'm real opposed, though, an alcoholic said to me. I have to think about this please.

That's like watching someone change deck chairs on the Titanic. You know, they're over here and then they go over there. Oh my God, they're still thinking when someone starts with I've been thinking. Just if you say to yourself that's what they're doing now because

they can't make a decision. That's why we let everyone share in Alcoholics Anonymous from the newcomer on, because we know people have to verbalize things so that they can understand the problem. They have to get it out. That's why we let them talk, because we know sooner or later they're going to forget themselves and tell the truth.

And when it happened, he'll see it. The fear comes in their eyes. Help us. Celtic health is Celtic. You know. Now they know. Now they know, you know, although we didn't know in the first place.

So if you're going to be a sponsor, do what good sponsors do. Learn to listen and listen all the way to the end. Don't interject your advice. You may be giving them a solution to a problem they don't have. That's that's another three years of thinking. You know, it's like the guy who showed up at the sperm bank and he was 87

and the nurse said, what are you doing here? He said I want to make a deposit.

She said Sir you're 87. He said I want to make a deposit. So she gave him a Josh. He said go down the end of the hall and fill it up and bring it back. So he took it, went down the end of the hall and 1/2 hour went by.

She got scared, went down to see what was happening. She knocked at the door and she heard this voice say come in.

And as she walked in, she seen this man all ruffled up in the corner, looked like he was wrestling with a gorilla.

And he said, miss, he said I've used my right hand.

He said I've used my left hand. He said I even banged it off the wall. He said I can't get the litter at this job,

and I know sponsors who would jump right in there. Yeah, well, I know the problem first, you know,

So if you got to be a good sponsor, have the courtesy to listen to the end, even if they don't know what they're talking about,

because they have to hear that, you know, they have to go through that process.

And the longer you're here, you'll hear people say, I'm having trouble finding God.

I don't know where God lives

and we have a step that says we seek God through prayer and meditation.

Really throws you off the track.

And so people say, well, how do you meditate? And I don't know about you guys, but meditation for me is that time of the day when I get perfectly still and I go from mine to no mine, from ego to ego lessness. And at that time of the day when I meditate, I don't solve a problem. I solve all the problems because what happens is when I come back from my meditation,

I feel as though everything is OK.

I don't have to know how it's going to workout. That's why we have a spiritual program. We are no longer bound by logic. You know when people say, well, how can you be sure it's going to work out? I say it always has. Now, you guys don't know this, but when we came here, talk fast again, when we came here, Bob and Goldine and myself, we had a flight that was going to leave at 1:10

and you guys had me set up to speak last. And it's a, it's a rush now, but it was going to be impossible then. And it's a lot. The only plane out of Scotts Bluff today to Denver.

And so I I didn't know how it was going to workout, so I just let it go

in a couple of days before I was to come here. I got called on Tuesday. Bob and Goldine didn't even know,

but the flight for some reason was changed to 135.

Now you guys may say, hey, is he saying he expects miracles? No, I rely on

and one of the things that you'll find out here about the spiritual part of the program is the fact that there's two laws of compensation. One of them is the materials world.

If the law of economics that we all understand, if you have $100 and you spend it, you no longer have $100. But there's a much bigger law than the material law of economics. There's a spiritual law of economics. The more you give away, the more God gives you to give away.

You cannot tap out. If you hoard it, you'll soon find it gone. But if you keep going and giving it away, you never run out. You wonder sometimes where it comes from

thinking

they you don't ask those kinds of questions when you are really in tune to the spiritual part of this program and it's people say, you say spiritual part. I know the whole program is spiritual, but there may be some newcomers. We don't want to scare them off yet, you know?

Remember, you have to have a rabbit before you have rabbit soup. And Alcoholics that I observed not only in myself and but in others. We go through life scratching shit that just don't itch, you know?

Which is about as useless as hubcaps on a tractor, you know, We just do it. We go along and we and we, we Diggle, Diggle, Diggle, Diggle, you know,

and we, we know because the book is very emphatic that you're going to have to get well from the inside out. But most people get well from the outside in. In California, when they come in, the first thing they do is make a big decision on whether they're going to join Family fitness or not. Join family fitness. Smoke or don't smoke.

Look for Miss Rice or Miss right now

because they know that's what God wants. Yeah, I pray about it.

And she appeared

there because she sat on her lap at every meeting.

And we thought to get well that way. And so you go through all those things, you know, you dress up the outside, the way you think you have to dress it up. And then you'll reach a point in life where there'll be some speed bumps. And you'll notice it's not how well you look that counts, but how well you feel.

And then the real growth begins to take place because there's no more questions to be asked.

See, if you're constantly approaching life like it's a problem, then you have to get an answer. You begin to understand it's a mystery and you don't have to know any answer. And it gets real, real simple. I read in another big book, which is not approved literature in a, a, I'm sure of the Bible

and there's a sentence in there and it says be still and know that I am God and how very unstill I was when I first got here.

I didn't know how to be still. I think being still for an alcoholic is a death defying act. You know, we don't know how to do that. We don't know how to just stand and understand that it's not going to be all right, but it is all right. No matter what's going on around us, it's okay. And I'm always impressed with the fact that people think there are normal people out there.

The normal people. There are no normal people. There are just people you haven't talked to.

You know,

we all swim in the same water. And that's one of the big things where you come to realize here and we all have the same things that we're trying to work out. And it gets real, real peaceful if you allow it to be real, real peaceful. And you learn to live totally in the now.

We have trouble, it seems, living in the now. It's like the guy who met a gal in Vegas and he said, I'd like to spend the night with you. And she said, no way. He said I'll give you $10,000.

Within moments they were upstairs in a room, nude on a bed. And she said kiss me on the lips and he did. And he said I don't know. She said well then kiss me on the neck and he did. And he said, I don't know.

And finally she said, then kiss me on the breast

and he did. And he said I don't know, she said what don't you know? He said. I don't know where I'm going to get the 10 grand.

See, that's alcoholic thinking.

You're right in the middle of a good thing and you're projecting a problem. You know,

Learn to live in the now.

After you're here a while, you'll find out there is no there, and then people talk about there, and then there is no there, and then there's only here and now. And when you're in the present, God is right there with you. There is no problem. There's nothing to figure out. There's nothing to become.

We already are. From the day we were delivered into this world, we were God's kids and it's OK. And we don't have to figure out anything. I'm always impressed with the fact that people say, I don't know what I'm going to do with my life. Hey, go back and take that third step.

If you take that third step, it's not your life. You've given it up. It's his life. Let him worry about it. You know, don't worry about, well, am I going to have money? Am I going to have this? Am I going to have that?

Don't worry about that. That stuff all gets worked out. If you're sober and you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. We're we're free from the logic. We don't have to figure it out. That's the nice part about it. You don't have to spend all your time going back trying to figure out what am I to become. You already are.

You know. When a rhinoceros comes into the world, she's already reached the quintessence of rhinocerosity.

But as Barbara mentioned, when when a human being comes into the world, we're into the process and we're into the process of becoming, and we're always becoming. And God knows exactly what we're going to end up if we just let him at the control. But somehow we don't want to do that. I had an opportunity not too long ago to be in a little plane.

And in that little plane you maneuvered it on the ground by the petals. You know, that's you made your left turn, your right turn based on how you maneuvered the pedal. And there was a little kid with his dad in that plane and his dad was letting him sit in the jump seat next to the pilot and there was a wheel there. And he the kid said, can I turn the wheel? And the father said sure. So the kid was had the wheel, it was going left, it was going right, it was going all over, but the petals were working the plane

and I often felt after that is that must be the way God looks at me. You know, I'm down here on the on the wheel and I'm

and he's softly going.

And once you come to the realization that all good comes from God, it's one source, then it can come by any channel. You're not limited. It can come anywhere. Sometimes God to show off makes bank shots, you know.

That's just to let you know he's doing it.

And you wonder how did that happen? And the website in me NASA

and don't lay around in bed and contemplate problems I hear Alcoholics in California share when I get up in the morning. Somebody introduced the word committee. I don't know where it came from, but people get up in the morning and they say I don't get out of bed. I listen to this committee and they're arguing and they're gone. Hey,

I may be unscarred by education, but I read at one time in my life. I had a chance to read for four years.

I was in a state institution of higher learning,

and so I read good shit, you know, became an avid reader.

And the thing that became apparent to me is that although I was unscored by education and learning to read, is the fact that 97% of the people who died in this country last year died laying down in bed. If you have any fears, it should be bad.

When my alarm goes off in the morning, I get up, you know, I say, hey, that's where they die, laying down. If he made a mistake, let him live with it. You know, I'm off. And now that you're up, go do something, you know, be embarrassed. Don't be a noun.

Get out there, at least before you look. Make life worthwhile. Don't live in fear. There's absolutely nothing to fear. The effects may appear real, and you have that impact, but there's absolutely nothing to fear. And the most powerful force in the world is found in this room, and it's love. There is no force more powerful than love. And the thing that happened here is that when you come in, you get the right kind of love because people give it to you unconditionally.

And as was mentioned by Barbara, I believe, about attachment, love has absolutely nothing to do with attachment. Love doesn't have anything to do with the other person. Love is a state of being. Either you are love or you aren't loved. A rose is love. It gives off its fragrance because it has no choice but to give off its fragrance. It doesn't say Here comes Kenneth, shut down. You know

that's not the way it works. And you give love because you have to give it. You have so much of it

and it's unconditional. It's not like I give you this if you give me that, you know? And it's not attachment, it's detachment. And I didn't understand that either. And I used to think it's totally insensitive to be married to someone and say you're detached from them at the same time. And then I understand or I came to understand that sensitivity had to do with awareness. It had absolutely nothing to do with attachment.

It had to do that. I was aware this person was there, they had a right to be there, and they had a right to do anything they damn well please.

And my job got real easy. I just got up in the morning and went and screwed something up.

Go do it early, get it over with. You know, don't,

I mean, we're living in a world where the water is polluted, the air is contaminated. At least out where we are, the food has carcinogens in it. Every day I read I can't eat something doesn't stop me, but I I can't eat it officially. And I hear people say, well, I'm afraid of making a mistake. We got a president who who imagines the past and remembers the future. You know,

we,

we have an attorney general who's a defendant, more cases and he's a prosecutor.

We had a chance to hear those Iran Contra hearings. Those were an alcoholic's delight. I stayed home and watched those.

We had this military guy up there and he had all this regalia and he's a nice guy, clean cut looking guy. And they said, Sir, did you lie to this committee a year ago? And he said, yes, I lied to you,

Sir. Did you lie to this committee six months ago?

Yes, I lied to you,

Sir. Are you ashamed that you lied to us? No, I'm not ashamed,

Sir. Are you telling the truth now? Sure.

And things change, you know, They're changing all the time. Be part of the change. I remember about a guy who was in Paris and he got got, he's never been to Paris.

And he got in the cab and he said to the guy, take me to the Vespa dello in town. So he went and he met a gal and he went upstairs and he did everything he ever fantasized about doing. And he came down, he said, how much do I owe? And the guy said free,

says free, say yes, it's free. So he left, went home, came back the next night, said to the guy, I want to do the same thing all over again. They said, fine, did the same thing all over again, came down, he said, how much do I owe? And the guy said, 10,000 francs, he said, but it was free last night. He said yeah, but you were on television last night, you know,

so things change. You never know when you're going to be on TV, you know?

Live your life like today was the last day and then nobody owes you anything.

Get it all in. Don't put anything off. Don't postpone anything. Your job gets in the way quick, you know

she's saying. Not you, Charlie,

you get your ass up and go.

But

know how much time we have? We're all on loan to one another, and it's very, very fragile. Life is very, very fragile. I kid about the fact that nobody in my family made it into Alcoholics Anonymous. The end result of that was when my dad was 50, he died in my arms behind this disease. He walked from one room to another and went into an alcoholic convulsion and choked to death.

And at age 50, he was out of the game. And I had a brother

who two years ago, and I had a sister also who two years ago. My sister went into the hospital in October of 86 and Christmas Day she hemorrhaged for that period of time, the Christmas Day, and she weighed about 65 lbs. She had cirrhosis. They couldn't stop the hemorrhaging and the bleeding. And she died Christmas Day behind this disease. And Christmas was a Wednesday that year.

So I went from San Diego to New York and we buried her. We had to wake on it. She was awake from Wednesday to Saturday and we buried her on Saturday. And I went back to San Diego and I went to a big New Year's hoot and Annie that they had every every year. And when I got home, there was a phone message my brother had died in alcoholic convulsion New Year's Day. So we buried my sister on Christmas Day and we rather she died Christmas, my brother died New Year's. We buried the Miche on a Saturday and my nephew got picked up that afternoon for drunk driving

and he had watched his mom die behind this disease and his uncle died behind this disease and had no impact. So I understand the serious part of the disease. But the deal is, is there is an answer, and that answer is Alcoholics Anonymous. And there is one who has all power. That one is God. May you find him now. And what you'll come to realize, hopefully the longer you're here, as I said before, is that there's nothing to be worked out. It's already worked out

and you have to pass it on. You have to be active in the program. You notice that in this book, there's no chapter that says into thinking, you know, into analyzing, into evaluating, into equating. It's into action. It's real simple, Bill and those guys, through some divine intervention I'm sure, knew that the one thing you didn't want to have two Alcoholics doing was sitting around discussing the world situation.

It's much better if they go get somebody.

I used to call my sponsor and he was a very wise man. Very wise man. Taught me how to be a good father. He taught me how to be a good husband. He taught me how to do things that I just didn't know how to do. Told me how to be honest, taught me how to get a job. I used to think all the traditions came down to we're self supporting for our own contributions. It's real tough when you have to make a career change later in life,

particularly when you were used to finding things before people lost them

and you had to go fill out a job application. What's your experience? Come on.

But he allowed me very gently to do those things and he kept me attached to his family, used to have me over his house and and involved with his family because I didn't have one of my own at the time.

And back in the East Coast at that time, we didn't say sponsorship. It wasn't even a word. I'm sure it's in the book here. I've read it several times. I think it's in the chapter to the know it All,

but we used to put the hit on people and I'd call in and say, you know, I'm alone and I'm a job and run, run, he said. Good, I'm glad to call. There's a guy in the Bronx, go get him.

What I got to do with me? He said go get him. So I'd pick some poor slob up in the Bronx and take him to a meeting, and I listen to his troubles

and I go home feeling real good.

And then I'd call my sponsor, the Magside, and we went through this over and over again. And if he didn't send me, if he had no one for me to go get, he used to say, hey, look at it this way, you might hit the jackpot and die tonight. And he'd hang up.

Very sensitive human being.

And there was a time in 1983 to show you how God works, at least in my life, is the fact that I didn't know I was going to go through a period of burying 11 in my family in an 18 month period.

I had no idea that was coming. And So what I did was in 83 I decided I wanted to do something different. And so I signed up in the Hospice program in San Diego. And part of that deal is you work with all of that deal is you work with people who are terminally ill and before they take them into Hospice, their diagnosis or prognosis has to be a year or less. They don't take people who are expected to live four and five years. They just don't have the the people to work with them. So they take people who only have a year or less.

So I was assigned to a guy, the first guy I ever went to see

at that time, about six months left in his life and I went to see him and he was real angry, 72 years old, dying of lung cancer, and it was a painful death. And he said, I'm real angry. And I said, what are you angry about? And he said, I don't want to tell you because you wouldn't understand. And I said, why don't you give me a chance? He said, no, I don't want to tell you. You wouldn't understand. And I said, look, I'm here to help you, so tell me and whatever it is, we'll try to do it. He says, OK. He said, but the most important thing in my life, you won't understand. I

what is it? He said. I'm a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous

and he said I have 39 years sober and I should have gotten a cake two months ago and I'm too weak to go at night because the cancer just knocks me out with the medication during the day and I'm pissed.