Fr. Gavin G. from Dittmer, MO at Oklahoma City January 1998

My name is Jesse. I'm an alcoholic, and it's been a real privilege for me to get to be able to host our speaker this weekend. We've hung out, so I went Nate and he's an alcoholic.

I think we'll get a really good talk, and I introduced Gavin.

Hi, buddy. My name is Gavin. I'm an alcoholic. Yeah, you got that right. I am an alcoholic

so Z

like to say hi to the smokers in the backroom.

Feel sorry for you. The guts are walled off back here

and I used to smoke, so I know how hard that is to quit and how long most of us wanted to do that before it happened. Either God exists or he doesn't.

Doesn't that sound like the beginning of a Hellfire and brimstone sermon?

The quotation from the book Alcoholics Anonymous,

and I suppose the next sentence implied is if there is a God, the good idea to have a relationship with him.

And I think that's what Alcoholics Anonymous is about, having a quality relationship with with a higher power. And there may be some new people here who are frightened with that word God. But I want to assure you

if God is, you understand him.

So I hope you don't try to stay sober by yourself and I hope you find the freedom to find some kind of prayer that you can be comfortable with. Then have to be like anybody elses prayer

as long as you try to stay sober with the help of some kind of higher power.

You know I'm an alcoholic. I'm also a grateful member of Al Anon and a recovering bigot.

Thanks Sam. Already in trouble here.

I like that moment of silence at the beginning. And Sunday morning people pray a little more than usual, so I'd like to include another prayer here. You can identify with this. Dear God, I thank you, because today I've not been resentful, angry, jealous, self-centered, arrogant,

or afraid.

But I think I'll still need your help

because pretty soon I have to get out of bed.

Someone wrote a book, I think it's out of print now. And Alcoholism had a wonderful title, Thirst for Freedom,

and I always felt caged in and

wasn't locked up like Sonny, thank God,

but it felt locked up a lot of the time.

In looking back on what happens in Alcoholics Anonymous, I realize that's the very first thing we give people when they walk through that door. Freedom.

Come on in. And we're not going to label you, we're not going to pry into your business, but hang around with us for a while.

And we're going to give you the freedom to figure out if if you think you belong here or not. But you're welcome while you're checking that out. And we're going to give you the freedom to find out about a higher power or get back in touch one with one that you've already known. And we're not going to push on that.

I was trying to comp. I'm not a mathematician either. I was trying to count the other night. I think I've been to 5000 + a meeting since I've been sober. And you know, in not one of those meetings have I ever heard anybody tell anybody else how to believe in God. That's amazing

per group of people who are interested in growing spiritually, not telling you how you have to do that personal, very precious special relationship. And as was pointed out by some of our previous speakers, God works through people and He sure works through funny looking people. Have you ever known?

She's a friend of mine In the program. George and I used to get together for coffee or lunch about every two weeks, and one week he'd choose the restaurant

and the next week I'd choose the restaurant.

And every time it was my turn to choose the restaurant. I chose Bill Johnson's Big Apple on E Van Buren in Phoenix, and George didn't like that restaurant. Part of the reason I chose it.

One day he slides into that booth and he's got pain all over his face. And I said, George, you really don't like this restaurant, do you? And I loved it because it's got sawdust on the floor and the waitresses wear six guns and say, y'all, it's got great food,

he said. I can't stand this place. I said, what's wrong with He says, full of ugly people?

I thought, what an awful thing to say. But then I looked around

and he was right.

So George and I had this little in joke between the two of us. You know, I'd be traveling around the country. Every now and then I'd call him and say, where are you guys? I'm in Seattle, Seattle or Portland OR wherever. He said, what are you doing up there? I said they're having an ugly convention. You wouldn't believe how many ugly people there are here.

You know, that's kind of a silly little joke, but some people found out about what George and I were doing. You know, there's some people that are so ugly, they live underground all year. They come out once a year and go to the State Fair. If you want to look for uglies, go to the State Fair.

And in some way, we're all ugly. None of us fit that TV image of Aussie and Harriet or the movie star or starlet or anything. We all have character defects

and you know, those of us come to this program, find out about that, and we find out. We can talk about our ugliness here.

People don't talk about their ugliness many other places,

and that ugliness is one of the reasons why a lot of us drank so long

and why we tried to look for beauty in all around places. I grew up out West. I was country before country was cool, so I slipped into song titles without knowing it.

My favorite? It doesn't get much play right now, but it's Have You Heard It? That's my girl, but it ain't my truck.

Guy drives by his girlfriend's house and there's some other fellow visit here, you know, it's my girl. Did it ate my truck?

You know, marketing people, people that are involved in sales have discovered that Alcoholics are the number one purchasers of country western music.

Is that amazing? So that's surprising when you realize most of it's based on self pity.

You all know the perfect country western song. You know, it rained the day my mom got out of prison. You know,

those same people discovered that most Alcoholics, in addition to buying most of that music, think they can sing real well.

In an actual fact, we can't.

I wish Nancy was here this morning. Boy, I enjoyed everyone of the speakers, the ones that are here and the ones that are on the way home.

One of the speakers said that something like a sobriety Stew. Everybody had a little bit different angle on the things that I care the most about. And the boy was a tasty meal

anyway. Nancy could tell you about singing, be able to sing well. You have to do that scale real well. You know, Doremi's has a lot to do. Every time an alcoholic tries that, it comes out like this. Me, me, me, me, me.

And we don't think other people know what our problem is. Me,

I'm real comfortable here this weekend. I I'm just getting over a cold. Feel good this morning for the first time in about 10 days. But you people have been wonderful to be with. Even Friday when I arrived and couldn't talk.

So I may get a little silly.

Somebody sent me a list of the worst country western song titles. I don't know if this is a real one or not, but it goes right to the heart of

the treasured tragedies that many of us have. You know those are the things you dust off when company comes. Did you hear what she did to me? Anyway, here's the song title. Get your tongue out of my mouth. I'm kissing you goodbye.

I am a real alcoholic, I have no doubt about that. And we are supposed to qualify. So let me make sure I do that Sonny would know where this little place is. I I fell out of my life in Phoenix, Scottsdale area and my folks lived in Tucson. I had terrific parents and used to like to visit them a lot. And I get down there every two or three weeks. It's like 120 miles

away

and I couldn't get from Phoenix to Tucson without stopping somewhere to have a drink. And I used to have this for I-10 was open all the way. I used to have a favorite little bar in a place called Maricopa

and one night I it was in there and just got my drink and a woman came in and caught her husband with his girlfriend. Got it. She never had evidence before. She'd suspected this was the first time she caught them together and she flipped out and there was a pool table in there. She starts picking up the balls off the pool table. It shucking them at this couple

and this lady had an arm. I mean, it was like an old Western move, you know, she's chipping plaster and breaking bottles. And

I guess they're about 20 of us in there and man, we're all out in the street in about 10 seconds.

Didn't want to get hit with a pool ball. And I remembered I left my drink on the bar.

So I went back there dodging all this stuff,

rescued by Drake and joined my friends out on the street.

Social directors don't do that.

That drink is not that important to social breakfast.

Something that in the Phoenix area is very popular with teenagers is, you know, it's hot there and it's dry and, but there's a couple of rivers not too far away. And one of the things I used to love to do is get a bunch of inner tubes and blow them up and get someone to haul them up to the Verde River and sit in those inner tubes and float down the river. And when I first came to Phoenix, I had something to do with the youth group and I borrowed a school bus and I took about 30 of these kids out to the Verde River

and I dumped them in the river with a couple of chaperones

and I drove the bus downstream to where they were going to float by about 3 hours later. And I'm there in this bus by myself.

This is how our alcoholic minds work. And I'm there by myself. And it's hot

and I suddenly realize I'm hungry.

And I know what I'm hungry for.

Popcorn,

by the way, if you park kids, thanks for the popcorn. That was great. And thanks for that hospitality room. That was terrific. You know, in the Old Testament, Sarah got pregnant when she was 80. God still works like that. I'm 60 years old. Last weekend I spoke at a young people's conference in Scottsdale.

What am I doing as a young people's comfort? They said. Well, you still got grown to do, don't you? Oh, OK.

Anyway, I distracted myself. Where? Oh, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm in that school bus and I'm hungry

and that's what my mind tells me. And I drive by

probably half a dozen convenience stores and half a dozen supermarkets till I got to Lula Bells in Scottsdale, which was a bar where there was a big bowl of free popcorn.

I wasn't hungry, I was thirsty,

but by mine told me I was hungry

and I never got back to the river.

I woke up the next day in my own bed at home

and I thought about those kids

going to jump up and I lookout the window and that borrowed school buses there. No kids,

you know it is a family disease. All of those teenagers covered up for me

somehow. They knew there's something wrong with me, that they really love and cared about me, and I don't know how they all got home and I don't know what kind of stories they told to keep the heat off of me, but they did. Alcohol is kind of baffling and powerful in the family as much as in the individual.

I want to thank Charlie for a phrase that describes my experience with alcohol. I've never heard it put better. Absolutely. Incredibly wonderful. Boy, that that talks about that Zing.

I thought it was like,

so I think, you know, I'm an alcoholic. When I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I didn't think it was going to work. I didn't know I was an alcoholic till the very end.

I like circuses. I've always been going to circuses since I've been six years old.

Where was Hugo to? Oklahoma's in this state, isn't it,

Carly? We could have gone to Hugo. That's the winter quarters for Carson and Barnes and Kelly Miller, Circuses and I, I've never been to Houston. I've got to have to come back

anyway, turn the end of my drinking. I don't know. I'm an alcoholic, but I know I'm crazy. And I know I'm crazy because I keep doing things I don't want to do.

I keep doing things I disapprove of. I keep doing things you disapprove of, and I can't stop. And when I took that first drink of alcohol, which was in my 20s, by the way, and felt that absolutely incredible, wonderful feeling, I could be anybody I wanted to be. And I was a little kid with an inferiority complex up until that part. And a couple other speakers have described that transformation better than I can.

Oh, it happened. I could be. Anybody wanted to be

until one day one who I wanted to be anymore and by then I couldn't quit drinking. That's my story. Alcohol used to work for me and I wound up working for alcohol. Our drinking stories differ. Mine was I had to drink all day long, very rarely got stupid drunk. But it was 3-4 years for anybody saw me sober and they didn't even when I went to treatment, they didn't think I was an alcoholic. They just said, well, he's nervous.

Well that was true too.

Nice to have the shakes. Not all Alcoholics have the shakes, but I had them bad

sovered up in Michigan and I went back there about 6 months after I was sober and people said things to me then that I know we don't say to people in a a. They said we never thought you'd stop shaking, we never thought you'd make it, we didn't think you could stay sober. And I have and thanks to God and a lot of ugly looking people,

you know, that's 29 years now

and I love it. My biggest fear was Alcoholics Anonymous wouldn't work for me. My second biggest fear was I was going to get bored. I have not got bored. That's amazing. I love going to meetings.

I go to a lot of not because I think I'm going to drink today anymore, but because that's where my people are and that's where that connection happened. And that's where today without alcohol, I have that absolutely incredible, wonderful experience. Happens every time we get together. And if that hasn't happened to you yet, please keep coming back. See some kind of a prayer that you can be comfortable with. Go to meetings and don't drink

and get a sponsor.

I want to tell you three of my favorite stories. I want to be jumping around a little bit here, but I paid real good attention to the other speakers and I don't want to repeat much of the kind of thing that they talked about. So mine will be kind of scattered. But it's amazing what happens to us around here. You know, I, I thank Cliff last night for that wonderful talk that he gave us earlier in the conference.

And I told him I lived about 8 miles from Oceanside, where he's from. And you know what? He told me he found out where I went to school and all that. He told me that one of my college professors got a year's sobriety before he died. And I can't tell you what that means to me. I didn't know this man drank, but I knew he was weird and I knew he was crazy and I knew that some people got grades that were different than what they should have been.

He probably got us all mixed up,

but he died sober and comfortable. That was worth coming to Oklahoma City to find out that Val died sober and happy. Those are the kind of things that please be today,

Callie. I don't feel old.

I was in San Francisco recently. I found a neat thing. In San Francisco you ride the bus for $0.35 anywhere you want to go and it's quicker than cars. You don't have to pay for the parking.

That was the good news. The bad news was, in the week I was there riding the bus, 4 different women on four different buses got up to give me their seat.

They must have saw something I didn't see.

I'm sold. I predate Styrofoam cups

that came up here. We used to have to wash them,

and I've been going to church all my life, still go to church,

and that's not why we're here this morning. That has something to do with the bigotry I was talking about. It wasn't racial bigotry. It's never been that. My dad was a contractor and he had a lot of guys working for him from different races in different cultures and different tribes.

And those are my buddies because I worked for my dad and those guys taught me the shortcuts

and they covered up my mistake. They were my friend. It's kind of bigotry I'm talking about. Sounds like this. This is how I grew up. Baptists usually get blamed for this kind of an attitude that take it easy on the Baptist.

You know they're right.

Anyway, it sounded like this inside of my head. You know, I'm a Roman Catholic. Too bad about you guys.

That awful.

That's how I grew up. Thought I had an inside track.

Spiritual arrogance

and welcome back to that a little later.

One day at our club, 4848 S Central, I was in the kitchen washing the cups and the ashtrays, my elbows and soap Subs. Miss Gal comes up behind me. And then she'd been looking for a A all her life. She really needed it. She's very successful woman, but she'd never been to the church. She'd never been around anybody that talked about God. And she gets to a A and they start talking about God. And she was so efficient and so quick. She wanted to catch up all at once. So she she used to ask any of us that's been around longer than her

all these embarrassing questions about spirituality,

like, do you really believe in God?

Most of us pause before we answer that a little bit because it's such a powerful question. And she would do it with so much love. You couldn't get angry. Anyway, I'm busy doing the dishes and I'm not real good at that. So it takes all my concentration. And I'm worried about this crud on this ashtray. And she comes up behind me and she says, Gavin, if you had to describe God in one word, what would it be? And I said, I didn't have time to think. I turn. I said sneaky.

No, I don't mean that irreverently. If I had to describe God in one word today, I could use a lot of words, but one of them would be very accurate, would be sneaky in a very playful mischief. But you think as have humor,

God has a lot of sugar. I mean, look around

toward the end of my drink and I didn't know I was an alcoholic. I just knew I was crazy.

And I was at Ringling Brothers Barnum Bailey Circus running around the backyard. I knew the performance director and I had access to all those performers doing interviews with some really fascinating people, you know, lion tamers and acrobats and midgets and jugglers. And

Can you imagine a drunk getting into a circus for nothing and being able to talk to all these exciting people? That's what was going on.

And that was the last year that there was going to be one Ringling Brothers show that split up into two units. Now you may not know that red unit, the blue unit, they alternate towns every year, but a lot of the old timers were upset about that and they're going to quit. And a couple of them told me they were going to give me interviews and I got around to them yet. So I go flying down to the railroad tracks, 15th Ave. and the Santa Fe tracks. It's all different down there now, but

that's where they're loading up the train to go to Los Angeles.

And I parked my car in this vacant lot.

There is more to it than that. There were weaves in the vacant lot and under the weeds was an irrigation ditch that I didn't seem to know this. So I drove my car into this hole in the ground and right away the front wheels drop into this hole and the back wheels are up near spinning around. And I get out of the car

and it's right by this 15th Ave., and a lot of traffic there, and people start stopping to try to figure out how their car got in that funny position.

And I'm a good enough mechanic to know I'm not going to get out of there by myself. And I'm too embarrassed to call any friends and too cheap to call a wrecker. And everybody with Ringling Brothers knows me at least by sight. So I go up to someone with A cause I've seen, you know, down on another siding. They have tractors and forklifts and, and all kinds of diesel equipment. And I thought I'd get one of those guys to pull me up, you know? So I went up to someone with a circus and I said my car's in a ditch,

we're going to have to get it out

Now. Those are two big clues to alcoholism right there. I created the impression I had nothing to do with the car getting in the ditch. And I recruit an enabler right away. You know, we, we are going to have to get it out. And he said nothing to it. I'll be right back.

Well, he disappeared. The crowd gets bigger

and about 10 minutes later he came back. No forklift, no tractor. He had an elephant.

They put a work harness on target. That was her name, and she closed my car out of this ditch in front of a really big crowd. Now, when the elephant showed up, the crowd got big.

That was embarrassing.

Something I usually don't mention. It talks or sometimes they're doing, sometimes I don't. But not only do I still go to the Catholic Church, I'm a priest, and

that incident got in the newspapers. In case you were wondering if the elephant really happened it did you know we could look up the old newspaper article? You know, something about ponderous pachyderm rescues. Partly priests,

I added the portly part that really didn't make the newspaper.

But my most vivid memory that night is some little kid yanking on his parents clothing saying look look look at the elephant pull. A drone

could have killed that little cat.

You know what I'm thinking? I'm their parents have a young child like that. I'm so late at night,

you know, here's this disaster going on that I created and I missed the point. I'm worried about parenting

and guess who needed the parenting?

And I got a lot of it. We call them sponsors.

I went home that night. I noticed a rather dramatic story. It was all true

and I'm sitting in the kitchen drinking Scotch out of a coffee cup. There's that's another clue. Social drinkers don't do that.

And you know why I'm drinking? It's embarrassing. I want a Blizzard. I want escape. And it didn't happen, and I can't explain it physiologically, but the experience I had was the more I drank, the sober I got. I want escape and I get clarity, man. I didn't want clarity. That clarity was awful. And I'm saying these words, I think I said them out loud. I used to talk out loud when I drank, whether anybody was there or not.

Used to ask myself questions too.

I knew I was in trouble. One day I asked myself a question. I said, huh,

well, we're not in very good shape when we get here.

You know, Step 2 talks about being restarted to sanity. I don't have any trouble with that. But, you know, half the time I don't think I need to be restored to sanity or that I'm insane as much as I'm retarded. You know, I figure stuff out after it's all over. They'll kind of going through life like, well, that's what that was about.

But if I hang around with you people, you're so quick, you catch on quicker. Night,

I got to take a free ride. You catch on quicker than I do about what's important.

See what I mean about God being sneaky?

I'm talking to myself and I'm saying this is impossible. I couldn't park in a ditch

and the elephant didn't pull me out.

Someone with the circus wouldn't turn down money, and that happened too. Here's the next thought I had. If these impossible things could happen, I could be an alcoholic. Nobody ever called me that. I never thought about that before,

but this is amazing. That quick, I knew that's what I want.

And I had a favorable impression of Alcoholics Anonymous because of two friends that I had admired. And they both told me that they had a quality, wonderful life today and they were so successful personally in their lives because of a thing called AA. So tucked away in the back of my mind was this thing is that Alcoholics Anonymous is a good thing. It helps people be comfortable with themselves,

helps them be the kind of people I like to be around and love. And so I picked up the phone and I called Larry. He lived in Tucson at that time.

And I was hysterical on the phone. He said. It was a couple of minutes where I could figure out who it was because I'm crying and finally says, oh, Gavin, is that you? I said, what's the matter? And I blurted out, I think I'm one of you.

I couldn't say the word alcoholic yet.

That was the low point in my life. I think I'm one of you. But it got lower real quick because you know what Larry said? Terrific. Oh, God, I couldn't talk. You know, I call myself this most awful thing I can think of and he's getting off on it.

He hooked me up with a man that later became my first sponsor and took me a little while to get Sonar.

But after that first meeting, I haven't had a drink, thank God.

See what I mean about God being sneaky? How many people do you know that were 12 step by elephant in a small trial?

How I got here? You know, those little, little strange pieces of our history that add up to get our attention and to get us here. The next story I want to tell you is my very favorite. It's not humorous, but it's my favorite story.

Let me tell you about my first sponsor. I went to a meeting every night for the first couple of years.

Les was a old man hunched over arthritic TV salesman.

And I go to a meeting with less and then we'd clean up the club and then we go out for coffee with some people. And then each night he would say the same thing and it was like it was new. Each night he'd say once come down the house, we'll shoot some pool for a while and went down the house and I'd shoot pool till midnight or 12:30 or 1:00.

I told you how crazy I was when I got here

and how people didn't think I would stay sober. Les knew how fragile I was. He knew how delicate my ego was, and he knew a meeting wasn't enough for me. He knew I needed to be with somebody,

so the invite, I didn't figure this out. Two years later, you'd invite me down to the house to shoot pool.

I live to a different part of town. I didn't get to that house for quite a while. I went down to return a book to his wife, Ruth, one day, and the pool table was out of the family room. When I said Ruth, the pool table was in family room. And I said, yeah, we put it in storage. You know, Les never did like to shoot pool.

Here's this 70 plus year old man staying up to the wee hours shooting pool with me because he knew I needed to be with somebody and he didn't like to play pool. You can't pay back that kind of lot

less. Waited until I got really screwed up. It was about a year sober

and I knew I was screwed up because of an incident. I was in a residential neighborhood and I'm doing about 5055 miles an hour in this residential neighborhood. I nearly hit a little boy on a bicycle. I didn't hit him, but I came real close. I still have a very vivid picture of how close I came. And I got the car stopped and the little boy got so frightened he wobbled around on that bike and fell off the bike. And I get out of the car and I go running back to help him.

And if I read the body language right, he figured I missed him with the card. I'm going to run him down on foot,

you know, And he hops on that bicycle and he is gone.

I hope I tell this story enough so that someday I'll meet him and be able to apologize, makes some amends. I was so shook at what almost it had. I'm not drinking, I don't want to drink, but I'm a space cadet.

My mind is never where the vehicle is when I'm driving it.

I was so shook up I couldn't start the car.

So I walked a couple of blocks and found a phone booth and I called my sponsor and I said less there's really something wrong with me and you know all about me. Tell me what it is, said Where are you said? I'm in a phone booth

like here. I don't know what you know. Sponsors carry a list to phone them,

he says. Well, come on down to the house tonight. I'll tell you what's wrong with you. Been waiting for you to ask.

So went down to the house that night and he said, Gavin, you don't know what's wrong with me. I'll tell you what's wrong with you. Now let me back up a little bit.

Couple of things. You know, I like surfaces.

I work for the United States Air Force at Travis for a year, and we're flying all of the wounded from our side to Travis.

So I saw 8085% of the wounded in one year period of time.

There's an incredible job. Let me tell you about Willie. God gets us ready for this stuff before we know we need it.

Catholic priest and fully employed by the Air Force. But I'm not a member of the Air Force,

which means I have

officers privileges get to go to the officers club.

I like that the organist would play my song. When I walked in, everybody knew I was there.

I hear that song anymore. A gag.

Then I thought it was hot stuff.

We have those troops there a day or two, and then if they were well enough, we've got about another flight to take. A mirror, veterans or military hospital near their family. Part of getting well,

and I'm in this ward with four guys and there's a guy over here in the corner that I haven't got to yet, and I like him a lot.

They didn't have any paperwork on anybody and I dressed like a priest. You know, the black and the little white thing.

And so everybody knows what I'm about. But the job description was I had to be everybody's chaplain.

So if you're Presbyterian, my job is to help you be a better Presbyterian. If you're a Mormon, help you be a better Mormon. I did OK with the Catholics right now. And then I get over my head with this other stuff, and I'd have to call for help. You know, there was always some other chaplain or minister or rabbi that would come by. It was a wonderful job. For those of you that are educators, you took a lot of those courses in schools about teaching. And there's a phrase that educators use called teachable moments.

This was a teachable moment. These guys just got shot at.

They are home in this country. They're safe. Nobody is shooting at them. They might be missing part of their body, but they're happy to be home. A lot of times I saw those guys get off the aircraft and kiss the asphalt because this country met so much at all

to get up to the hospital and pretty nurses around. They approved that,

Red Cross says. Here's a carton of cigarettes if you smoke. Here's a telephone. Talk to anybody you want for 10 minutes. And I get to walk in at this teachable moment.

And because I didn't have paperwork on the troops, I'd I for one, I'd tell them who I am and thank them for what they did for this country and for some other people and tell them I'm glad they're safe and alive. Ask them what does their religion.

And this one guy that I'm watching out of the corner of my eye, I like him before I get to him. His name is Willie and he's a black Marine Sergeant, really built,

and he'd been machine gunned across the chest and it broke his arm up. That was in a cast. They had to do a lot of work on that yet, but he'd never seen the wound on his chest before. And he's a very muscular guy, so a lot of bulk there.

And the nurse is putting saline solution or some kind of solution on that dressing so that when she takes it off, it won't hurt. And he's given her bad time. He said rip that sucker off. Go help somebody that needs you. I like the guy. Huh.

The nurse did just what she said, what he said. You know, she goes rip and that thing comes off and all of us in that room kind of, you know, did this double take. Except Willie. He vaults up out of bed.

Never seen that wound before. He looks in the mirror. He's looking at his ribs, where all the flesh and muscles been shot away.

Is that so bad? Hops back at base and put a Band-Aid on that. Go help somebody else.

I like the guy,

so when I get some, I go through my regular routine. I get to my question. I say, what's your religion? You know what? He said. The Marine car.

OK, now here's the beautiful thing. No sooner had he said that he thought he had embarrassed me, he said, oh, Sir, I'm out of line. I shouldn't have done that. That was improper. I apologize,

he said. I just never been in church,

said. But I believe in God. He's my buddy. My buddy goes everywhere with. I talked to my buddy all day long. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't her. My buddy.

I hope you have a buddy for God for God for buddy.

We talked about his buddy for about an hour.

I'm in the midst of my active alcoholism. The Air Force has given me great performance reviews. I am trying to make sure they don't find out they have a lunatic with a high security clearance working for them.

And guess who ministered to who that day?

You know her dad. The next day, the aircraft he was supposed to be on had in trouble. I got to spend another hour with Lily.

Third day, you got outranked by everybody,

spent another day with Willie and we corresponded for six or eight years, lost track of each other. So what a wonderful relationship.

Willie knew all about conscious contact.

His buddy was more real to me than the God that I grew up with was to me.

What a wonderful way, God, ahead of preparing me for Alcoholics Anonymous with my arrogance

in my bigotry,

to find a lot of troops who weren't Roman Catholics, who were deeply spiritual, and some of them didn't even go to church, who had what I wanted. Like Willie. I'm not exaggerating the impression. I think I've had to list the five most spiritual people I ever met my life. Will it be on the list? I doubt about that. What a wonderful gift God gave me. So then I get to an anonymous program where it's got as you understand them, and I find out that all kinds of people experience God differently.

And what a personal, precious thing that is.

Tell you a little bit about Jay. Jay grew up in a denominational religion that doesn't like Catholics. It's not supposed to talk to Catholics. And every time I'd sit next to him at a meeting, he'd move.

Jay and I knew each other for about 3 months and after this we said I want to talk to you and he's shaking.

Sure. So Clan Outback, I thought, oh geez, it's going to be one of those deals.

We get outside and he said, my church tells me I'm not supposed to be talking a lot of people like you, but I got to talk to you.

By the way, I get into the mode where I'm going to help them, right? And here he says, you are so screwed up. I'm going to pray for you. Is there anything you can do to keep you from praying for you? You really need a lot of help

man. I'll take those prayers every day.

Isn't that a beautiful story?

During that stint with the Air Force,

I knew I didn't know anything about alcoholism and I didn't know I was one. But I knew I was spiritually sick.

And I figured out in I psychoanalyzed myself, don't do that.

It's like, do it yourself. Brain surgery. It starts out OK, but you lose track of stuff down the line, you see,

And I came up with the diagnosis that I suffered from excessive guilt.

I heard a guy about eight years into sobriety lists some of the characteristics of Alcoholics and addicts, and he said all addicts suffer from excessive guilt.

Man, I ran up, gave a big hug. I said don't ever leave that out of your top.

There's something I try not to leave out of my talk too. When I, Chris got here, I was very suicidal

and for the first year, year and a half of sobriety, I was very suicidal. And I finally worked up enough courage one night to talk about it in a meeting and nobody touched it till the meeting was just about over. And one guy said, oh, you're the fellow with the suicidal feeling.

And I said, yeah. He said, I can help you with that. You know what those are? I said no. He said those are suicidal feelings.

Well, thanks a lot,

he said. You know, you've been around long enough

to know that when you feel like drinking, you don't have to drink. I said. Yeah, he said. Has it ever occurred to you that if you feel like killing yourself, you don't have to do that? That had never occurred to me. It was like a weight lifted off my shoulder.