Steps 1 and 2 at the Carry This Message group in West Orange, NJ

I'd like to now introduce our guest speaker for the month of April

taking on steps one and two

is Howard from Gillette

can you guys tell me yeah okay

good evening everybody

my name is Howard I'm an alcoholic

I certainly in my case it's by the grace of a loving god

and by the power that I found is the result of a program in the book Alcoholics Anonymous

if somebody support I get from the members of our beautiful fellowship

by the service that god has blessed me to participate in

I've been separated from alcohol since July ninth nineteen eighty three one day at a time and for that I'm very very grateful

and if you know me while I was drinking is be grateful so the two

I want to thank this group for inviting me to share my experience

for the month of April

and this is a very special month to me for two reasons

firstly it was during the month of April that bill got together with a couple of his cronies and they decided to do a deal in Akron Ohio and that brought him together with Dr Bob

and it not been for that I don't know that I'd be here in front of you today

and also on the tenth of April nineteen thirty nine a big book was published

so that is sixty four years ago thanks to me that's very very special and I happen to have with me one of those big books that was published in nineteen thirty nine the first edition first printing of the book Alcoholics Anonymous I don't really take it around too much because even older than I am

but you can see why they called it a big book this is a very very big book could you imagine walking in New York City we're getting on the subway with a book like this and trying to keep your anonymity

I heard this is a story from a friend of mine who is a bartender

many said Halliday said

you don't have to read the big book to know the difference between a social drinker a hard drinker and an alcoholic and this is really he says I've been saying that for many years I said tell me about it

he says if you serve a social drinker and drink and that happens to be a flying in the drink to drink say please replace this spring

thank you Sir if you serve a drink with applying it to a hot drink it to say Hey buddy give me a spoon of gold okay before I added the drink and then hope proceeded during

but he said if you serve a drink with a flying knee to a real alcoholic they get incensed

because they don't like anybody touching their booze

I what the alcohol will do is very gingerly take the fly by both wings and put it over the collection say spit it out

I was born in Brooklyn New York

and when my parents took me from the hospital if they had foresight they would have taken me to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous

and it will you really would have prevented many many years of misery not so much for them the cost my father passed away when I was fourteen so he really didn't see any of it

my mother passed away when I was twenty six and she saw some of it

but just the people that I had come in contact with over the years and I know that everybody who I had any sort of relationship with or association with was adversely affected by my presence in my life

and I think about that and I feel badly about that and there's really nothing I can do to change that except in the present I can change myself not to repeat those things

I came from a family of nine children being the youngest and I learned at a very early age how to manipulate

one sibling against the other to get what I wanted I also learned at a very early age that I could get things outside of me to make me feel better about myself for example

I could manipulate and con a little bit and get a favorite toy that I wanted and I would feel good for a little while

if I was able to be present when my parents went out for dinner and they let me order from the adult menu I was happy for a little while so what are very very early age I learned that I could take something from the outside which would make me feel better on the inside

when I was about eight years old I discovered alcohol

we would gather together in a social setting

and little was being served and I noticed that when little was present at these locations the climate in the room is very very different I come from a very loving family caring family but not necessarily physically demonstrative family not necessary a family where there was a lot of laughter

but when there was alcohol served there was physical hugging caressing there was a lot of laughter now I don't know that I process this as a kid as I see it today but all I knew is I wanted with they would drink it

now I wasn't allowed to have what they were drinking however what I did do is I always volunteered to clean off the table because if I could clean off the table I could get the remainder of the beverage let me drink

and I really enjoyed that tipsy feeling now mind you was awarded down but as an eight year old it had an effect on me

from a very early age I liked the effect produced by alcohol now eight years old how can a person be restless irritable and discontent it will to some degree I was unless I got what I wanted the new toy the dollar menu whatever the case may be to watch the TV program back then there weren't many but to watch a TV program and things like that I also remember about that

that I must've had a drink off of a glass that wasn't quite ward it down you might call it a stiff drink and I remember getting nauseating feeling from that and what I did was I went upstairs to the bathroom and I relieve myself of that drink and I came back downstairs and I look for more

now I can imagine an eight year old ingesting something that made them feel nauseated that they would want more but somewhere in the back of my mind alcohol was doing for me when I wasn't able to do for myself I did not know those words but obviously that was the fact

I also remember at this time there was this thing going on with polio and this is before the vaccine

and what are the types of food that parents were advised to feed their children with food that contain a lot of iron

and one food that contains a lot of online was eleven

now I don't know about anybody in this room but I don't like the way it looks I didn't like the way it smells I didn't like the way it tasted but I had to eat the liberals god's going to punish me maybe some of you can identify with that and I did it deliver and I remember one time I ate that liver and I got a noisy aiding feeling from that level and I went up to that very same bathroom on the second floor and I relieve myself at that level and it's been almost fifty years and never had the obsession to eat liver

now why is it

that I was unable to see the truth time after time after time after time of the first drink

yet I can remember that this taste I had for another substance

I have an abnormal reaction to alcohol I wish somebody would have told me that when I was eight years old

I would have prevented a lot of misery

I grew up looking forward to having a drink it too whenever I could possibly have it

and then when I was fourteen years old my father passed away

and at this point I had to force the first thought is that god really punished me this time because I grew up in an environment where god was a punishing judgmental could even god how would you do this god is going to get you what you don't do that I finally got to my father and the second thing I thought it was one of my father when you make

I use that idea of my father leaving me as an excuse for many many years to continue the lifestyle that I had

at any rate what I did being that I was the man of the house now and my father left the small business of which I was in charge of I took over the master bedroom and I put my mother in my bedroom and in my father's bedroom there was a foot locker the whole within the room with movies now my father was not a drinker but he used to like to have varieties of alcohol

from that variety of alcohol had a variety of variety of religious experiences that he had a variety that alcohol that you couldn't get it right it states and I partook in at

also about this time as I look back I became a very popular person

now to Lestat Ono I was just a popular person off I had a lot of movies but none the less I have a lot of people in my life at that point here's

and I remember drinking

only on weekends for a period of time because I knew I had to do well in school and I did pretty okay in school for a period of time but I would look forward to the weekend and I would look forward to the weekend earlier and earlier and earlier during the week like Monday I was saying I wish it was Friday that that that sort of thing

but alcohol was a solution for me in many respects as a young boy who was shot by who is insecure or who feel as adequate as other people I had to partake in certain activities in school like school dances and I hated to go to school dances because I was very much intimidated by young girls and I knew that if I would drink before I went to the stances I wouldn't be able to stop and I knew that I would become obnoxious so what I would do is I would go to the school dances and I would always bring a bottle of booze with me small bottles that I would stash outside somewhere behind the bush whatever the case may be and I will go to the school dances not because I really wanted to but in reality you had to because if you don't go to the dance on Friday you have nothing to talk about on Monday that sort of thing so I would go to the stances restless spirit of bull and discontented jumping out of my bag of skin minders were riding I couldn't drink because I know if I drank I couldn't stop it if I didn't stop I would be obnoxious but nonetheless I still want these dances and I would walk into the it was a gymnasium in Midwood high school it was a huge gymnasium wood parquet floors and two basketball hoops on either end that work turned up toward the ceiling and they had you know like balloons and things whatever the hell they had I can actually remember

I love going into this room with my heart was due within these things and I look around at all the women in the room when I say I don't like ahead I don't like address and why because she was on a like a smile because if I didn't like something about how I didn't have to ask her and if I didn't ask I would be rejected thank god with that she would say yes I'd be stepping all over her feet

I tell you it was rough being a kid in my shoes at fifteen sixteen years old but suddenly

the thought crossed my mind that I have something outside that's going to change this

I would grab me a couple of hostages

who also wanted to drink and didn't have it and I would take them outside after that I got caught I could say it was there's always good like that

and it had me a couple of drinks real quick and all of a sudden my body would be a wrecked I would have a full head of hair I had the confidence that when she asked me to dance I could dance like Fred Astaire and she got lucky I can make love like Don Juan and I haven't even swallow it yet it's still in my mouth

that's what alcohol did for me at a very very young age alcohol was not a problem alcohol was a solution for me

am I drinking progress

and finally

on the in October

of nineteen seventy three

as a result of my drinking I got into an automobile accident I was severely injured

of which I feel to this day

I remember waking up in a hospital in Brooklyn Long Island college hospital moment on a lake Avenue and I said I never want to leave this place I felt like I had died and gone to heaven and I was okay being in this little room with dark green shade and dark green walls because when I looked at the ceiling I thought I was looking at a Monet painting was like a god it was like indescribably wonderful there was a feeling that I never ever had before and it was much better than the feeling that I was getting from alcohol because by this point alcohol wasn't doing for me we used to do for me I was still my friend but it wasn't giving me that real kicker

I was discharged from the hospital and I went on a quest

to get that feeling I had back again

and from nineteen seventy four to nineteen eighty three my life was a living hell I was sequestered in an abyss that I cannot seem to get out of

was a horrendous feeling

being a man at this point

coming from a wonderful family

and looking at myself in the mirror

and seeing an individual who vaguely look familiar

going

yellow skin yellow around the whites of my eyes I mean it was terrible and I didn't know what to do

I would wake up in the morning every single morning three years and I would say to myself this is telling you you can't do it you can't do it

and another voice inside my head would say Howard

you can't live this way you can be with yourself all day you've got to get something

the other voice would say you can't do it it's telling you the other voice would say you've got to do it there's a mental phenomenon that parallel with my sound reasoning K. that insanely true excuse for taking the first drink insanely trivial and lie to the consequences

my sound reasoning failed to hold me in check

an insane idea one out

I picked up the drink I didn't know why but I couldn't stop after that

and I go through the whole day

I finally go to bed that night and I wake up in the morning I want part of my head would say you can't do this this is killing you and another part of my head said you've got to do it you've got to get some relief you can't you've got it you can't you've got a

it was an incredible existence and I was a man who if you looked at you would say this man has everything

all the all the material things that you could possibly want the family at some point the friends

I was successful

why would somebody like me be doing this I could never answer that Britain

hi my drinking continued

finally

December twenty second

of nineteen eighty two I was arrested

for a felony on a police officer

and I had to go to court in July and I went to court

and it was postponed

and I came back from court and I was sitting in my easy chair in my apartment she said thank

I used to have a nice apartment and she said that when we say when I first moved in there

it was as wretched

and then as this repair as I was was really horrendous I mean I got to be it's got to be to such a point that would you would take the sheets of my bed they fall apart they were on so long

if you would drop something on the floor you would pick it up with a bunch of wall with it you know that kind of thing it was just incredible the way I live and I came from a nice family

I came back from court

I'm bill talks about is riding nerves it's almost like it looks like a warm with his head chopped off you know you know that the the dance they do that's what was going on inside of me that dance

I said I can't take this anymore man I said I got to go out and buy a bottle there was no you can't

I went out and bought a bottle of vodka

I was like a hundred proof and it was unusual for me to buy a hundred proof anymore because a couple years before I went to the doctor and the doctor said to me how would you drink in March a little bit he says I don't want to hear anything you've got to cut down twenty percent this is great I think eighty percent seven hundred percent

no problem

so I went out and I bought a hundred percent

when I came back to my apartment and I wanted to my living room and I sat down and that broke down the easy chair that was beautiful one point

and I finished half a bottle of vodka and I got drunk

I'm from the living room to my bedroom there was a roll of carpet tacks on the floor that I failed to pick up

and I stumbled on to that role Koppel carpet tacks

and I was drunk that's dead weight and I felt those nails go in the heel of my foot and I felt those nails commodity hill on my foot and I went into my bedroom and I lay down and I says maybe I'll bleed to death

but god had other ideas because I woke up that morning and then there was the pain of getting that shape or put a dried blood and it started the bleeding all over again and I said the hell with this with the trail I went into the kitchen I went into my freezer and I got me that half a bottle of Bach and I last

and I went into my living room and I sat in my easy chair and I drank the other half a bottle of vodka and I was stone cold sober

I couldn't believe it I half a bottle of vodka

and I'm saying this is not even working anymore

see what alcohol did for me is that it created more problems after a period of time than I used alcohol to escape from

so there was like no way to go right now I could even get really

give me five minutes to relieve

stop this inside of me I can't take it

little voice inside of my head

so how would

why don't you pray

I'm looking around I'm alone I'm looking around and saying who's this

I think for a second

I don't know what I said but it might have been something like this

dear god

the the take me out

show me the way

and the next day I wound up in a rehab from sheepshead bay Brooklyn to summit New Jersey

and I spent nine weeks in history have interests that I don't know if I was that sick working insurance I had was that good but nonetheless I was there for nine weeks

I learned two things

seventy grand but the praise god I was separated from alcohol to things online the first thing is I have a disease

the second thing is I need to go to meetings

the really didn't tell me

the remedy for my disease but that's something that I had to find out myself and I went to a lot of meetings I was delighted meeting make is make it I said wow this is it baby I'm cool

I went to a bunch of meetings

and the long and short of it is

after about eighteen months I wanted to blow my brains out

you take alcohol and a million treated alcoholic and you're left with the X.

and that was it follow what I mean I was restless irritable and discontent this

I was filled with shame fear guilt and remorse for the things I was doing to people I love to was sold I was sober and I was doing these things

and I'm saying how can they say a program isn't working for me

I think the fourth insists that

I wrote my life story which I was told to do my sponsor the time took me to page seventy five seventy three or seven years seventy three and said you want me you've gotta tell somebody for your life story

so I called this guy all my life story but before I told it to him I made two appointments and told to my counselor I wanted to make sure I got it right before I went to my sponsor that cost me ninety balloons with a dress rehearsal

I miss the sponsor said to me this is wonderful I've never heard such honesty in my life

but you know what I was doing

I was telling

I was writing down had a world home me

so I stayed sick

and I continue to stay sick until god sent the messenger in my life

and I went to a workshop and storeroom called the way of life

at the sterling house

and I met a woman there but any misses the merry T.

and it was through this woman that I started to get some sort of understanding about the power of god

at any rate one of the people at this meeting went to Florida

and I went to a big book study that

and they catch me they got a flyer about a big book study there and they brought back the flyer

and she asked me if I would like to go and I said sure

and I went to a big book study in may of nineteen eighty five

and I was in a room with a few hundred other people

and it was two guys in the front of the room

I got to tell you the truth I want to have a drink with these guys

they just want my kind of people I got to tell you that

and they went through the book Alcoholics Anonymous

I don't see it now I'm amazed I'm resentful I'm saying myself why did I learned this in the twenty months I was in a hurry

what do I have to go to Florida to get this information what's the deal here

at any rate for the first time in twenty two months I learned something about the disease Alcoholics Anonymous why would I add these fees for my life

what was a restless irritable and discontent that all my life

what was I always seeking for a sense of relief outside of myself all my life

I used to go out to dinner rarely but from time to time to necessity I had to be with people who are the real alcohol abuses

the people I have one drink and say that's it

you know what I'm saying I'll never forget this

I go out to dinner with somebody

I already know what I'm going to drink and I say would you like to have something to drink and they think about it for a minute because they're not sure

that is beyond my comprehension

follow then they say yeah I'd like to have such and such and it's always a sweet drink that mask the alcohol and it has to have a lot of ice in it

fine hi I hear it coming because he they are yes

anyway

but

the the server puts

the drinks down I'm drinking wine and their twirling the Saka

I'm drinking wine and they still twirling

I'm saying to myself what's the deal here

after three drinks they finish their drink and I say would you like another one home now I'm feeling this one what's the purpose of this deal you know what I'm saying

that's a normal reaction to alcohol that one to have to maybe if you want to have that **** he got a warm comfortable feeling and I'm happy

I was never happy

I was never at the happy

I spoke to a relative of mine

and I said that Shelly tell me how you feel

when you take a drink and she looked at me like I had three eyes because social temperature is don't talk about booze that way you know

this is all I ever really think you should you remember about twenty years ago we had that party and I got drunk and I got sick

I never found it necessary or desirable to drink again after that now I was an automobile accident that nearly took my life and I could we get out of the hospital to get a drink you don't

sources tell me what happens if you have more than a couple of drinks she says I never have won a couple of change because I don't like that feeling I just tell me about it she says I start to feel a little out of control well you get now

I start to feel a little nauseated

and I start to feel a little tipsy

and I just don't like that feeling well that's not my experience

when I have a drink of alcohol I get in in control exhilarating give me some more alcohol get up and do something kind of feeling

not a slightly tipsy out of control beginning of I don't want any more alcohol feeling that was never in my consciousness from eight years old

so I stopped drinking

you get an alcoholic one or maybe two drinks they're ready to go to bed

you give me one or two drinks I'm ready to go to town at different different experience

nine out of ten people drink like my sister

and one of the ten people drink like myself she's a normal drinker I'm the drinker I never ever knew that I thought that when a social temperature Rinker took a drink there will power prevented them from taking another drink

it's not the will power they just don't want to have a drink it was beyond my comprehension when I took a drink I needed to have another drink before I drink was gone and I needed a third drink more than I needed the second in ninety eight more than the seven

something within me

demanded more

I like to meet those demands will never ever

relinquished they would never have the keys

they would never ever satisfied

they were always more and more and more and I never knew that I never knew that when I left the house and I said I'll be back in a half hour and I really meant it and I will go down the street

and I would see some people in the saloon and I would say to myself I got it back in a half hour but it's ten minutes back I go to pick up some forty five minutes I got fifteen minutes to kill

you know what I'm saying and I will go into the saloon

and I would sit down and have a drink

and the next thing will be three or four hours later and I didn't mean it when I went in there I really didn't mean it

but something happened inside of my body

that demanded more alcohol once I put alcohol in my system

I wish I would have known that back then

to my body

as an alcoholic reacts to alcohol differently in ninety percent of the people on the face of this earth

and my mind thinks about alcohol differently

the ninety percent of the people on the face of this earth

trust me social temperature rankings don't have drawn dreams they just don't have that it's beyond their comprehension

so my mind is different

and my body is different

and that's what separates me as a distinct entity

for ninety percent of the people on the face of this earth

I also have another component

I have a book called the spiritual malady

a validate unwholesome condition on wholesome not whole

my spiritual condition is not whole there's something missing in my spiritual condition

I'm affected we blocked off from god the phone blocked off from god I'm running on self

so once he's in conflict not from within but from without

presses suitable discontented need someone to fix it Phil would change their guilt or remorse need someone to fix it trying to direct the show you don't listen need something to fix it

from the outside putting the inside

many people have spiritual malady

I'm one in nine kids eight and have spiritual maladies they just don't know what they're resentful for fear they harm people through their actions the restless irritable and discontent that

they're just not aware of it

thank god I am aware of it and I can do something about it

when I got the information

about my illness

after the first time I realized

that is my thinking

and that is my body that makes me an alcoholic

then I realized that I could cast the body aside for a moment

and he what my thinking because if I never drank my body would never be affected

I'm allergic to lobster

I just don't need it

there's no manifestation from not eating lobster

why is it

that from time to time

my mind would tell me how would you haven't had a drink in a while this time it's going to be different

she I began to realize that the body does with the mind tells you to do

I have my mind gets my body position to pick up a drink of alcohol

saying that there's no problem picking up that drink alcohol

that's what my body is going to do

and once it does that then actually the physical component of my illness and then I'm off again and again and again and again

so the question for me is

what do I do about my thinking

if I can bring it to my sports with sufficient power

the memory

of the suffering of humiliation of the degradation of the home that I created in other people's lives let alone my own if I can't bring it to my consciousness the consequences

the end of my own power I am without defense against that first drink

I never have been

what power only works with my mind sees what it's about to do is incorrect harmful or hurtful

for example

if I'm walking at night

and there's no stars out and no moon and it's pitch black my mind is going to say how would you gotta be careful because you may trip and hurt yourself

when I come to a corner and there's traffic both ways my mind says to me how would

you've got to stop and look because you can get hurt unless on the J. Walker but that's another deal

so you see will power works in many many instances in my life

I was on able to see the truth about the first drink

because I suffer from something called insanity

doesn't mean I'm crazy

insanity means there's something missing added a whole

insanity excuse me means there's something missing out of the hole sanity is defined the sound this wholeness of mind

therefore insanity is a mind that's less than the whole so there's something missing in my thinking

that is unable to see the truth about the first drink I can see the truth about the dark outside I can see the truth about the street corner I could see the truth about the little

I could never see the truth about the first drink and based on the life I would pick up that drink I treated a physical component and Baltimore

so my real problem sentence

in my mind

a lack of power you know yeah yes I don't know if you've ever experienced the solar eclipse

the sun is the most powerful source of light

known to man

yes something comes in front of it blocks at all

I had a spiritual clips

god is the most powerful force on the face of this earth which self could block it

so in essence self could be more powerful than god if that's what I feed into

I never knew that

I thought I could handle everything

my experience shows me that I couldn't put my mind said it could

I was obsessed

an obsession

is an idea that so powerful that it overcomes the truth

and allows me to believe the lie that this time it's going to be different

this time is going to be no consequences

I think this for nineteen years

I remember when I was a kid

I was coming out of the bathroom I did a pastel I was five years old you notice acne skin on a five year old and you know the push is real small I accidentally backed up on a radiator and racial wealth the size of a quarter on my on my little river and I gotta tell you it hurts it really really our

it's over fifty years since then

I never got up to around the area and drop my drawers and say maybe this time it won't burn me

how cool did that to me every single day I'm able to see the truth about one thing but not about the other I'm not crazy I'm insane my mind is less than whole I haven't on wholesome spiritual condition my spiritual malady

I never knew that

if I am powerless over alcohol

there's a difference then I need a power

usually the solution is the opposite of the problem

I need a power greater than ourselves collectively to restore me

the saying the truth

a state of sanity before I pick up the first rank

I need a power greater than myself

I tell you my problem

I always thought that that power was god

and I don't want anything to do with god

because my experience growing up as a kid is that god is a punishing judgmental get even gone

took my father when I was fourteen allowed me to drink myself to death

nearly killed myself in an automobile accident god showed me what he had in store for me I wanted no part of that

but I was faced with an alternative

the dorm than alcoholic that

I know what that was about

I really don't want to go back there

photo section which will help I don't know what that was about but I think it was that bad I can always go back and be doomed

it was still difficult though very very difficult for me

I had some suggestions

to look back

and see how powerless I was and when my thinking got me

and that's the control point

where I had to decide whether god was gonna be it well god was not going to be

how my gonna do that

I was given some suggestions

the first thing was to lay aside whatever preconceived notions I had about god that he was not punishing judgmental get even god that I grew up with

labels aside for a moment

I believe in the existence of a god

and I did I was in a gnostic I believe that god existed but because you couldn't prove god to me

I wasn't going to take a chance

so I ran on my own power just like the asus

even though I did believe in god

the third thing was to come up with a conception or an idea of god

whatever I thought it was going to have to be anything gigantic could be actually very limited

and then become willing to believe

in that new found conception let me tell you something

when my back was up against the wall

I born into this

and I began to think for many many years

there was always a voice inside of me

that told me what to do what not to do however this is not a good idea however this is a good idea how would you align you shouldn't be doing that how would you live in in this way you shouldn't be doing that

in my particular case there was always a larger voice that said the hell with that little voice you're going to do what you want to do when you want to do

I eclipse god

and I did what I wanted to do and I wound up with all kinds of trouble I was thirty seven years old when I got sober praise god thirty seven I got into a pole kinds of trouble

and when I would settle down a little voice inside of me which I want to listen to me next time I'm going to set you straight