Wayne County Convention in Detroit, MI

and he's here to share this message with you and I'd like take have you all give me a warm dry wall

at eleven people clap for me

their dues made everybody starts clapping I don't know why yeah I know why you know baby you know me maybe don't you just start clapping and that's a nice thing simply from Cleveland area

that's a nice thing but I'd like to thank with a nice round of applause I've been on a number of committees in my sobriety and I know being on a committee is a new way to make friends

we are not enough committees you know it's a good way loose to

so I think we ought to give a nice round of applause for the people invited me here and who made it possible for all of us

yeah I should appear before a

before I start talking in a lot of things go through my mind is I'm sitting up here

analysts in our works and I'm listening to chairman talked in and what's going through my mind tonight is the

I wore a black suit with blue slacks and thinking about

and I did notice that there was that down up here tonight

but it is a program honesty

my name's ten thousand I'm an alcoholic

no I didn't plan to be an alcoholic okay not to be an alcoholic

my dad was an alcoholic it was a member this fellowship they got sober in nineteen forty six

and in nineteen eighty passed away and he had ten years of continuous sobriety put together at that point and what that did for me at an early age was give me an opportunity to see what an alcoholic what

see what Alcoholics Anonymous was and see what the disease of alcoholism one

I came from a family where I had six stepfather's

I had thirteen step mothers

I went over twenty schools I never got out of the race

I've had an opportunity in my life

to spend time in boys homes in detention homes in city jails county jails

workhouses psych ward treatment centers in penitentiary

I've been married three times and divorced twice

I spent twelve years in my adult life either on parole probation or locked behind some doors are more and I left home when I was fourteen years old

but you know not one of those things I just mentioned are the reasons I walked through the doors of alcoholics and on

those were merely the situations that my disease of alcoholism created in my life

but on June twenty third nineteen eighty two

I woke up at the bottom

it is the bottom they talk about the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous

when you know a loneliness the juice you may I know

that's when you're at a jumping off place

when you're wishing for the end

when you can no longer imagine life with

or life without alcohol

and that's the bottom

you see it's not a high bottom

but it's not a low about a meter

nearly the bottom and if you're in this room tonight and you've admitted you're powerless over alcohol and that your life would become unmanageable then you've reached that bottom

I don't ever want to be able to sit in a room of alcoholics

listen to a speaker speak and start thinking things like maybe I wasn't that bad

maybe I was worse

I don't ever want to start thinking anything is going to make me think I don't belong here that I'm unique or different from anybody else sitting in this room

I want to be part of this today I don't want to be different

I had my first drink at thirteen I got sick I blacked out I passed out and woke up in the backyard of a lady's house in rocky river Ohio

I had my last drink it thirty

I got sick and I blacked out and I passed out and I woke up at home in my own bed you know that's really the only difference I can see in seventeen years of use and abuse was well I woke up the next morning

but I know today one thing for sure I know god wants me in Alcoholics Anonymous

the lady came out her back door she found we learn in our backyard she took me in the house you clean me up she laid me on the bed she found out who I was she called my mother let my mother know I was okay

seventeen years later I walked in the room is about quality not a miss I was over two weeks and that lady was leading the meeting

my very first drug

I found myself in the arms of Alcoholics Anonymous and that lady did for me that night

which you know how to do she was three months over that night

and they told her to help a drunk

they didn't just tell her healthy young drunks or help the old drunks the female drugs through the mail drunks black trunks white drops they told her to help with drugs and that's what she did that night thank god for the people that were in her path

and I still see that lady had occasion today and she's still so

there's two things bothered me most of my life to things I ran from most of my life those two things the responsibility and authority

you know I don't like being responsive

there's a lot of responsibility involved with being responsible

and you know I certainly don't like people telling me I'm supposed to be responsible and seem like a thirteen or fourteen years old everybody was everybody had an idea about Kim's life always close behind with both that Marie was most don't ask me

if you're wondering I'm tell you right now

my hair has always been too long

my jeans were too tight because I my boots were too high they said to him you should smoke not only smoking you should drink no don't drink him go to school and I don't go to school with him come home no please don't come home to

it is me

fourteen years old at a family gathering I hear somebody talking and they say my father my real fathers in the city of New Orleans and he felt

and that's all the information I have at that point and I left on the next day I went to find my real father I made my way to New Orleans I contacted Alcoholics Anonymous they contacted him and they put us together

and all of a sudden I had a father

all of a sudden he had a son

and I tried he tried for about three months to be those two things but you see neither one of us ever been either of those two things before so it just didn't work out too good

after about three months he started drinking and I found something out

come home a thirteen or fourteen years old passed out in my mother's living room the next morning should wake me in she checked me in she said son don't drink please don't drink you'll get with your father at

but I never saw what she was trying to keep me from getting until I was fourteen in New Orleans and I watched him during and I watched him get drunk and I watched him going to D. Jeez and I watch the people from Alcoholics Anonymous come into our little apartment take him away and put him in a detox unit New Orleans

and a fourteen years old I made a decision in my life that I'm not going to be an alcoholic

I'm not going to end up like my dad he ended up

and I don't have another drink for the next four years

but all of a sudden here I am I'm in New Orleans

I got no responsibility I got no authority I got the rest of my life to go wherever I think I want to be stay as long as I one day and leave if I don't like it there anymore

and it's nineteen sixty six

and I guess I was a

Lee several folks called me you know

and I didn't do much anything for next four years but I have four good years

I hitchhiked from wanted as country to the other

I woke up in Los Angeles in like it there when I grow up services provided like that with this crowd go to Denver in Denver was in no place I wanted to be at the mobile mobile they make me happy that they would go to Miami and that was just the way I live and it was a happy happy time in my life if I had a pack of cigarettes a sleeping bag or something to eat that day it was a good day

my expectations were being met

the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous tells me that my expectations are inversely proportional to my serenity level

as long as I get what I think I'm supposed to have exactly

when I think I'm supposed to have it

do you know I'm pretty happy

but as soon as it doesn't come exactly when I think I'm supposed to have it much or any level starts dropping

eighteen years old I'm outside Salt Lake City

and I'm coming home because my expectations are being met anymore all of a sudden I'm noticing things on the other side of the freeway though not as in people in their backyards and they have things they're doing things a plan with their dog or mowing the grass dipping a garage whatever it is they're doing they're doing in the same place every day they have some of that American dream and eighteen years old I want to come home

I want to be part of that magazine at you know the magazine and it tells us if we live in this neighborhood where okay if we were these kind of clothes were okay if we drive that kind of car were okay

I tried most of my life to fit myself in that magazine ad because I knew if I had those things

that you could see you know I was okay

but I could look in the mirror and know that

you had a chance

but I know god wants me an Alcoholics Anonymous

I'm three activities the salt lake city I'm up in the Rocky Mountains I'm at an off ramp where there's nothing there's no convenience store there's no gas station there's no houses there's nothing up there

let's go to a ski lodge or some

I woke up the next morning in a buddy of mine that were coming back east about five five thirty in the morning froze to death up in north Miami

we got up we want today are bottoming out on ramp started shaking knees and at the bottom of that Iran six back of Olympia beer

and that was my next drink

I drink three drinks three I told him if I ever get back to Cleveland alive I'm going to settle down

I'm going to marry the first girl I see

I got back we want to live

I stopped at my parents house my stepfather was at home so I was allowed to go in

I took a shower I change my clothes I borrowed my mother's car I drove the car to get a pack of cigarettes to pick the young lady at the check in and we got married

now we exactly get married that day

the only reason we did not get this because in the state of Ohio

the mail has to be eight it has to be twenty one or have parental consent a female I have to be eighteen or at brown

when I married my first wife I was eighteen and she was fifteen

this was not a marriage that was made in him

we don't know anything about the American

we don't know anything about love and I can't tell you today if I love that woman I can tell you this I live in my brother's van in the driveway in my parents home

because they haven't been allowed in our house since I'm fourteen years old

she lives wherever she can

because there's stuff going on in her home that she doesn't want to go back to

now we're together we're not alone anymore

for good or for bad we weren't alone anymore and we did the best we could with the information we had about love and marriage at that point in our life which was nine

I get up in the morning get drunk you get up in the morning get drunk then we beat each other up

you know we did that one day at a time

for about seven years well that's seven years I've gone places a lot a lot of places a lot of things to see I want done traveling yet but no I didn't make all my own plans for myself but other people making plans for me and most people make a plan for me was in line big benches and black robes and love

I had a bad attitude

I kept going to jail

you like twelve years my life I really only did two things

I got ready to go to jail

and I got raped almost remain in jail

and that's not all I did I had a bad attitude

I'm a child of the sixties and I was against it and I was for that it really did make a difference just depending on what you have that I wondered if you had what I wanted I was for whatever use for if you didn't and I was with them

and it was that simple to me I'll report card home from third grade on the back where teacher writer comments you know what it says

a bad attitude

it says Timothy does not play well with others

I'm in third grade they know I got a problem already

I got arrested a lot since I got a rise in trouble I got arrested for dumb stuff I wasn't a violent criminal

I was stupid criminal

I got arrested for things like obscene finger language to a police officer

I got arrested for verbal abuse of a police officer

and all those charges were little city in Ohio called Parmalat

and if you already have the Parma Ohio I can tell you that they got no sense of humor and farm on

I had a meeting about two years over I guess that a friend of mine was speaking it was a long time or any help me a great deal he was in jail

any any said something you know I two two and a half years old route smart you are you know you just out of anybody else but two and a half years sober I knew everything

and I made sure you knew I knew everything to you know I mean

and I'm sitting out there you know you hear stuff at meetings in here a lot but it just doesn't make sense to you sometimes and all of a sudden it does

he stood up here he said I've been arrested sixty three time

I was in a good criminal

bank man is makes sense not

right up on

I know I've been charged with at least sixty three crime

I wasn't a good primer

but in a verbal abuse gave them a police officer in Parma Ohio I found something else out

if you're ready to represent myself in that case

I just knew I son of Perry Mason and judge for the defense and things like that

I had to handle this little thing and I went and then I called my witnesses are not cross examine their witnesses I gave my final arguments the judge and you know what I found out

I'm not very good at turning other

that's just the way my life was going

nineteen seventy five I stood in front of a judge at all like that courthouse in downtown Cleveland he sends me

twenty to forty years in the penitentiary

I took a big sigh of relief

I felt like someone just lifted a weight off

now I can hear my wife and my mother in the back of the courtroom or cry

in a crime because they don't understand they know I'm going away and it's going to be for a long time and I think that's a bad thing but they don't understand

they don't know what I know

you see the judge he doesn't know what I know

he doesn't know where he can't punish me

as much as I have punished me

he doesn't know

yeah he can't send me anywhere

it's going to be more painful than where I've put

when I know that on that day and I'm ready to go please send me anywhere that's for now

hello Mansfield reformatory in in southern Ohio

nineteen seventy six the laws change my sentence changed from a twenty to forty two a one to ten and three years later they sent me home

you know when I came home all that stuff was gonna notice stuff from the magazine that the wife was gone the car was gonna motorcycle was gonna close was gone the jury were gone everything I thought I had to have in order for me to be something was gone

so I sat in a chair for three months and I drank

and I got is drunk as I could his many times a day as I needed to

and I blacked out and I passed out as many times that day as I needed to

I crawled into a bottle daily

but not once did I ever crawl into a bottle of alcohol to hide from you

now once in my life that I crawl into a bottle of alcohol to hide from them

I crawled into a bottle one day at a time is many times that day as I needed to

so I wouldn't have to face me

because I knew what I was I was an ex con

I was an ex husband I was an ex brother and I was the next time I failed at everything I ever tried to do in my life

but as long as I stay drunk enough blacked out enough and passed out enough I didn't have to face that

finally

after three months a friend of mine came over

he said you're coming with me physically took me out of the house

he said we're going out you can't sit in this chair and die you're out of prison I'm not going to let you die drunk here and he took me downtown to a little place called the pirate's cove in a flash of cleavage

and I'm drinking lower than beer my cousin fans plan to Marshall Tucker tune that night and there's pretty little girl walked past me and she smiled right at

if you know I smiled right back

and now is there that was my future ex wife

the plaintiff

I tried for a couple years she tried a lot longer

she brought things into my home that didn't

you never were they were never there

she had stuff that you brought that were never in my house she brought honesty and purity with her when she came she brought love and unselfishness when she came

four years later she left

there was only one thing left for her to take

and that was the disease of alcoholism

you see I know I'm not the only one I heard when I pick up a drink

she tried for four years I tried for two I had a good job and I tried to get in to that magazine

I work hard and I studied hard and I got promotions and I worked overtime and I did what I was told they did the very best I could for two years trying to be a different kind of human being than I ever was before

and you know after two years I took a look around my life

after two years of doing the best I could I didn't have a house on a lake

I didn't have to Lincoln street in the driveway

I wasn't wearing the right kind of close I didn't belong to the right kind of clubs and I certainly wasn't running around with the right kind of people

and in a drunken stupor one night I decided that those things were for other people and I was never supposed to happen no matter what I did

or how hard I worked I was never going to have any of that stuff and I gave up

and for the next two years I drank

I got on the morning got drunk passed out got me afternoon got drunk passed down got up at night

we got drunk and passed out and that's what I did for the next two years

my wife tried for two years to understand but she just couldn't

she is being eaten alive by disease of alcoholism and didn't know it

at the end of my drinking is like this it's not really exciting

but this is at thirty years old

you know those times when you get together with your family

if it's thanksgiving or Christmas mother's day Easter

you said at the table in your own hands you'll say great

your share a meal with each other you'll share each other's life

at my house this is the way that works

I drive over and I pull in the drive when I blow the horn

when you hear the horn inside my little brother will come out of the back door

eleven paper plate wrapped in tin foil in his hand

and your hand my holiday meal to me

and I'm allowed to sit in the driveway in my car

any my holiday meal up a paper plate the plastic knife and a plastic for

I can't sit at their table

I can't hold their hands and say great

they certainly don't want to share with me anything that's going on in my life at that time

but I don't want you to think they ever stop loving

I don't want you to think that even for an instant there love diminished for me at that time in my life

they simply realize that every time they reach down

and stop me from getting my bottom every time they helped me they hurt me and they finally figured that out

my parents loved me so much

that they let me go

I don't have any children

so I can only imagine how much love that much to

Doberman at this time in my life

I got a dumb Doberman at this time

I was at a meeting I talk at a meeting in quite awhile back and I and I told the story and gentleman stood up afterwards and he said you know dumb Doberman is redundant

and I want home looked up redundant and

you know he was right

yeah I come home and I think this dog and I take his dog outside tied to truly go back in a half hour bring the dog back in

you have a dog in the house he peed on the floor

I don't know I really thought he was doing outside

time out on the trees look around guns in the house he pees on the floor

before my wife left I came I woke up one morning

and I called her just like normal just to see if you have any wine money or cigarette money laying around

and she was real concerned that morning in our office and she said where's the doctor I threw all dogs way invited put it to bed right we're supposed to be she said be careful of the dot

as we may be careful to Dodge the dog with Matt last night

dog was growling and showing his teeth please be careful of the dog I said I thought it would hurt me I'm it's master that dog loves me

I said what was I doing

if you currently I came home that night in a blackout

I walked into the bedroom and I peed on the bedroom floor

here is poor dogs it now probably think and that dirty SOB speech last a hundred times we're doing now

even my dog has a resentment at this time

but I woke up that morning June twenty third nineteen eighty two and I made a phone call on his phone call I probably made a thousand times in my life maybe ten

this phone call my mother

the simple call it was hell

and my mother came

she walked into my house I'm kneeling on the living room floor I weigh a hundred and twelve pounds I'm crying uncontrollably and I'm shaking apart and she took one look at me in the first words out of her mouth were I'll kill her

for doing this to you

alcoholism is a family disease I'm not the only one I heard when I pick up a drink

blaming others is a big part of that disease my mother has a two

we started making phone calls

I found myself in an emergency room

I got a doctor give me a shot a fireman

playing with my stomach in telling the sun you have an alcohol problem I don't know if they're not me I don't want to be an alcoholic I don't know I plan not to be an alcoholic no I'm not going to be an alcoholic and we argued back and forth and he said he didn't care what I want to be I didn't want to be

you said you don't stop drinking you're gonna die Kim it's just that simple

it took me out and they put me in a psych ward any statically when I spent ten days and that's like what I'm powerless over alcohol my life and become a manager

I spent the first three days in restraints I wasn't tied down because I was acting a fool or anything I thought down because I try to hurt myself the night before and they were just trying to protect me a little bit

I got a psychiatrist he comes and visit me in at five or five five thirty six o'clock in the morning happy I got the happiest psychiatrist on art

working on my site

what a wonderful day

I don't know about the rescue all the five o'clock in the morning tied to a bed in a psych ward I decided Cleveland you know I'm not real spiritual

I told him what I thought

Hey just listen you know how they do it right in his chart and not instead

psychiatrists are

it gave me all the tests that MMP I'll take that MMP ideas that's a wonderful thing I think under one question that I like to have a nickel for every time I've ever done exactly somewhere to maybe take it again so I guess I never did that

but there was a question on M. and T. I was my favorite

do you urinate more than most people

I don't know

good answer that one

I'm powerless over alcohol my life has become unmanageable on iPhones like step one

but it's not

on the third day my psychiatrist payment

he took the straps on the set the chart on the windowsill

he sat on the edge of my bed

and he said son I can't make your wife come home

I don't have a job to give you I'm not paying a house payment for you

but if you never want to take another drink as long as you live

I can tell you how to do that

one day at a time

you see the psychiatrist was recovering member the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous

god wants me

and he sat on the edge of my bed you share a little story his story with me

and I share a little bit of my story with him

and now no longer was assigned powerless over alcohol

that my life had become a manager

all of a sudden it became we

we

admitted we were powerless over a

that our lives had become unmanageable and next step one

you see I know today

that without the wi

I don't have a chance me

seven days later he sent me home he gave me some I think it's the most valuable thing anybody's ever given me

he gave me a meeting schedule for the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous in the Cleveland area is that when you get home you do two things you go to a meeting and you get a sponsor

and when I got home I don't know what to do I tell ya what I do and I don't know what to do I call my mom

I said mom I gotta go to AA meetings she died I can get you

if you came and got me

given the hundreds of AA meetings all over this country back in the forties and fifties with my dad

there's been a big book in my house as long as I can remember and she took me to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous July fourth it was nineteen eighty two

she dropped me on your doorstep and she left me with some advice and I'm gonna share that with you

she said I'm not coming back to get you

you go to the front table you tell the people at the front table your new

you don't have a car you don't have a driver's license you need a ride home

and stay away from the women in Alcoholics Anonymous

and I paid attention to about half of my mother's

but I did get a sponsor that night

I walked in and I got a sponsor with an old friend of mine when I've been in the bughouse with before an infinite century with

the events over about three years and his wife was chairing a meeting that night she handed me the traditions three my first meeting

and I tried to give him back

and he said no this is your first lesson in a HM

you never say no to Alcoholics Anonymous

no matter what the request is

the answer is yes

then he said now you can go get a Cup of coffee and you sit down

things to do

if you set your preferred way he wanted an ad during the national champion

you have a Cup roadway

he said I want you to read one page in the big book every day I don't want you to turn a page until tomorrow

you read pages many times that things you think you want to or need to but do not turn that page until tomorrow

and maybe Jim just maybe in a hundred and sixty four days you might know something about the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous

if you are a travel plan I want you to use three words your mother taught you and your little boy

I want you to get up in the morning and nail down

you get up in the morning you kneel down and you say please

you get up you go about your day at the end of the day if you had had a drink you knew back down and you say thank you

please and thank you

my mom did teach me those words when I was a little boy

you know my mother called

the magic words

what's the magic word she'd say

and they were magic for me

my father got me into the steps

if you want what we have

hello I didn't know what he had

I knew I had a brand new gold Rolex

he had a brand new Oldsmobile Toronado and add a stewardess why do you want what I got

I didn't know what he had and I don't think you have to know when you come through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous you don't have to know what you want

because I didn't

all you got to know is what you don't want

and if you know that

then it's up to me to have something so attractive you have to ask me where did you get that

that's my job

to make you thirsty enough to want what I have

they said you do what we do so that's what I did I want where they want they want that meeting this meeting I went to they sat over there I sat over there they follow raffle tickets a certain way up all the money certainly I did what they did

and you know I came to believe by watching those people that my life could be different

and I nailed down with my sponsor and I said a third step prayer

I wasn't sure if I wanted god's will for me because I don't know what god's will was I an idea

and I didn't think it was gonna match up with mine real good

but then explained it to me with the pending

simply on the back of the pending see the words one cent

you can see the Lincoln Memorial

but as soon as you turn it over

on the front of the penny it's going to say in god we trust

and that's the third step

in god we trust

I think that's not about god's will attempt about mine what am I willing to do it in a my willing to trust god with it

today I can tell you I am and once I do that you know there's another word down into center at penny that comes into play

and that words liberty

and that's the freedom I get from self for not trusting god with my with

it was a young boy steps not something you want to rush right into you know what I mean you've got to take your time with that you gotta read all them but you don't wanna mess it up because we got it right was about we got blue books we got green bugs we got little blue books we got little red bumps we got a little black book we got and you got a real good if you don't read my message right

you know there's only one way to mess up the first

the only way to mess it up

at home one day last month because he says that

I said always going right along

you know any good news don't think yeah the new guy too much of the game the information

he said it'll get done in god's time

you know that's exactly what I was thinking to

and I'm on the phone

five minutes later the phone rang

it is my sponsor

and he said Hey

most welcome

and I got something now forum right I got information gave it right back to I said always going to get done in god's time

that's a good thing campus god sons tomorrow morning nine o'clock I made an appointment

I made appointment for you to do your fifth

yeah this is where my father was with me

yeah I mean if they want a copy of the raise my hand

yeah we'll do it

you know Jim does it

because my father has never once called me

not one

it said HM

you know not at your five years over you don't have to be a copy duty anymore

last month during call me when I was ten years over and say Hey you know jam now did you turn yourself over you don't have to pick up after yourself anymore I mean

must once again call me when I was fifteen years celebrates a you know you're fifteen years over knocking you probably don't need to read the big book anymore my father never once called me and told me to stop doing anything

he told me to do in first

really do things one way here and it's a day at a time

I did a four step but I did a fifth step

and I stopped in the big book done say stop

big book on the directions to a new way of life and if you want a new way of life you have to read the directions

I have a pair of pink socks at home

I never wanted a pair of pink sign

no one ever bought me anything Sachin I never bought anything thanks but I have a pair

I used to have a pair of white socks

in a brand new red tee shirt

then we are done this before eight

I got a red teacher but I don't want to watch it all by itself and once you were directed to watch watch everything on

Dr everything all right you don't know what I got

some of my teacher and I got a slight resentment

I noticed something on the back there's little tag on the back your teacher job I never noticed that writing on it already sent