The Fellowship of the Spirit conference in Grandby, CO

Well, to paraphrase a a well known a a speaker. If I had one meeting left before I was gonna go and meet meet Saint Peter up at the pearly gates, I would want this one to be it because it has already lasted a lifetime. I'm a slowly recovering Al Anon. My name is Rick Chituk. Hello, everybody.

Hi, Chris. And as they say in Nebraska, by the grace of God, a program called the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, a fellowship called the Al Anon Family Groups, and the loving and very firm guidance of a big book black belt Al Anon sponsor. It has not been necessary for me to plan any kind of murder, mine or yours, since April 10, 1987, and for that, I am extremely grateful. The air is full here. I get out of breath just walking from my room.

Watching my room, I think, is in another state actually, but I got a breath walking from my room just down to the the meeting room, but this is my my my first time in Colorado so I really, am very appreciative for the invitation to come here. It's it's a beautiful, beautiful state. I'm gonna say it beats the hell out of the the Shriners Clubhouse I was in last weekend in Des Moines, Iowa. No offense to the people from Iowa. Great people, but, they don't have mountains there.

A lot of corn. I I'm really quite, quite honored to be to be amongst some of the speakers that that you have have here this weekend. Just one of my dearest friends in the earth is is here today, Mildred. And it's just a real pleasure to share anytime I have an opportunity to with my dear friend. And, Mickey, I'm looking forward to hearing you tomorrow night.

And, Howard, I heard you once in Toronto, and it was a marvelous, marvelous talk. And I'm quite looking forward to hearing you again tomorrow morning. Like to thank Miriam and Dave and JC and all that stuff. Miriam gave us a great drive home up from the from the airport and, it's a good thing. You guys have a wonderful thing going on here.

There is a spirit here that is different from other places. As a member of Al Anon, I must say it is wonderful to be in a place that's Al Anon positive. I don't need to come up with a c. I'll say, hello from Al Anon. Or actually say it happens to say hello, I'm from Elanon.

There's actually people in the room. It's a quite a neat thing, especially on a Friday night. See, normally, the Friday night toss slot is the AA spot. Normally, the Allons, you know, we get Saturday morning at 9 or Saturday after after lunch. You know?

Sunday morning at 7 AM after the dance, yeah, I'll plug the Allon on in there. Well, you're gonna be Friday night at 8. Well, actually, 9. Thank God there are more people. How many states do you have in the United States?

I know you read the big book a lot. It says, you know, half measures avail us nothing and you certainly took that into consideration when you planned your potluck. What do you bring into the party? Every food bone to the human race. But it's not an amazing thing.

I'm not quite sure that it says that in the book that we we approach our illness with more half measures. I'll tell you, I approached my illness with all of the energy I could give it. If I could only approach my recovery with the same energy I approached my illness, I would get in that rocket to that 4th dimension just like that. Anyway, it's it's it's a it's a hot room. So why don't you take, like, 60 seconds, stand up and shake your booty a bit and just kinda get yourself a little rest before I start this deal.

I didn't say leave. Okay, class. Let's get back to it. I have absolutely no memory of a time before alcoholism. It's been there as long as I can remember.

Kinda like my parents, I never remember meeting my parents. They've just always been in my life. Never remember meeting any uncles, the aunts, they were just always there. And alcoholism is the same thing. There was never a time when I remember my mother sitting me down and saying, you know, Rick, your father is an alcoholic.

It was just always there. Matter of fact, I'd like to tell you at this point, you know, just as a matter of identification, I've had 5 alcoholics in my life. 2 by birth, father and a and a grandmother, and a 3 by choice. I met 2 of them in Al Anon. So I'm just here to tell you that tonight, if you're in Al Anon and female and might be wondering if you have a problem with alcohol, Ignore the 20 questions of alcoholics novels.

Simply come up and ask me if I find you attractive. If the answer is yes, run like hell to AA. It's gonna have the radar. Must I also have it for the alcoholic women as I stand before many of you. It's an amazing thing to me how many times I get to stand in front of all of you and I can these out, ba ding, ba ding, ba ding, ba ding.

Just won't have to act on it anymore. Anyhow, I I I was really quite a quite a nervous little kid. I peed a lot, still do as you can see. Threw up all the time. It was the only way I could relieve the pressure.

I just there was. I I didn't and I, you know, I didn't know that there was pressure, I just knew that I I needed to pee a lot. And my mother my mother became a little worried about her son and so she she brought me to the to the doctor. And they gave me this test and they put little pinpricks up my arm and down my arm and across my shoulders and they tested me some allergies and they gave me a blood test and all that kind of stuff. We sat around for a while and the results came back and they said to me, mother, mister Chituk, there's nothing wrong with your son.

But I peed a lot and I threw up all the time. I used to do odd things, like I would go into my bedroom closet and I would take all the clothes out and put them on my bed, and I'd bring a little table into the closet and a little chair and I'd put a light over the bar that would hold the clothes and I'd write a sign that said keep out. And I'd put it on the closet door and I'd go inside and I'd close the closet door and I'd wait for someone to come in. But there was nothing wrong with missus Jatick's son. I can tell you that as in in my adult life, I didn't I I outgrew the closet, aren't you?

But in many ways, much part big part of my life was saying to you, keep out, when inside, I was screaming, come in. And for whatever it was about me, I could not let you in. I said keep out with my body language, with my eyes, with my mouth, with simply leaving you. That was just part of who I was. But I'd like to tell you this evening that if they had a little test that they could give someone like me, where you could simply put a little pinprick in their arm and it would glow red with the disease that I had, my immune would have glowed really red for this disease because the disease that missus son had been and has to this very day is called alcoholism, the family disease.

I do not drink, but I have alcoholism, the family disease. And it is a definable illness. It has symptoms as much as those of the alcoholic. Now I did have an alcoholic at home. Nobody ever asked me that.

You know, I had a big one. My alcoholic, you know, like a pet, came on a leash. Every day the alcoholic say my, and I. I always say my alcoholic. I think that's because, you know, we need to have one of you to get in here.

How sick is that? God. Gotta know someone to be an ally on. Like, you know, the tradition says, you know, there there must be a problem of alcoholism in a relative or friend. I always think, well, if the alcohol isn't a problem, you can't come.

But, anyhow, we had that at home and and, you know, we had this alcoholic at home, and he would do crazy things. I'll just tell you one thing about it. My father used to love to do basically 3 things. He liked to garden, he liked to drink, and he liked to remove his clothing. And he would kind of start on a on a a Saturday afternoon, and you think somebody who kind of had those 3 little little things that he would do that he'd start gardening in the front yard, but that really didn't happen.

He'd start in the backyard kinda early in the Saturday morning, and it started drinking beer and as the sun came up, because it actually does get hot sometimes in Canada, and then he would he would he would start removing his clothes and he would drink more beer during the course of the afternoon, more clothes would come off and and finally he'd reached to the front about mid afternoon. And he'd kinda come in and want us to slather, you know, like like suntan lotion all over. He's kinda like a like really a greased pig, actually. And and in areas of and and ladies and gentlemen, you know, who who are, you know, no alcoholics like like we do from our side, you kind of just know the vision that I'm talking of out here. It's like some notice you say, you know, put the clothes back on.

So there's my dad out front and and and he also had an anger problem as well as his drinking problem and and really he wasn't naked, it was kind of like a thong And you just take, like, some Bermuda shirts and roll them up as high as you can and get them down as low as you can and the belly hanging out and the brown stubby bottle of beer and the cigarettes and in the gardening and all the neighbors going, oh my god. And then he he sometimes you get pissed off at somebody in the street and you go running after them And it'd catch them. And and, you know, there's this lather down alcoholic in the middle of the street, you know, the belly flopping, you know, like, and just vision my mother. Oh, you honk. Get in here now.

I want you. Just got those juices flowing. It isn't amazing. Those of us who have been with alcoholics as I have, you know, we kinda lie in bed, you know, and they kinda crawl in smelling of alcohol and cigarette smoke and all that stuff. And you kinda go, man, they didn't even settle like that before.

Did you bring the garbage in with you? It's like you just don't know what that's like if you're an alcoholic, but there we would lie. I don't know if it's you did lie there. I just lie there. There she is and okay.

How are we gonna handle this? And then, you know, you'd smell smelly every guy's aftershave and you go, I really don't wanna know this part. But, yeah, there's my dad out there screaming screaming at somebody. And there we are in the home looking out the window afraid to show our face. He's out there doing that.

We are embarrassed. Years later, I'm happy to report to you my dad got sober. That was a happy day. Stop taking his clothes off in public, anyhow. And he got the stickers and he put them on the back of the car, you know, easy does it and let go and let God, and along the way my mother said, for God's sake, Donald, everybody's gonna see those bumper stickers.

Please, no, listen. Listen. Listen. Listen. Listen.

Listen. Listen. Listen. Listen. Listen.

They're just out there and getting naked and gardening. They wanna get we're going on them and ashamed and afraid to show our face. Amazing thing. Along the way, my mother met some kids in Alatine, if you can believe that, in 1967. I was 11 years old.

She invited them into my house. They were coming to a conference in Toronto. You know, this active alcoholic home came, these 4 Alatine members, and an absolutely incredible thing happened to me when I was 11 years old. I met you. And for the first time in my life, I felt that it was okay just to be with people.

And they brought me to a conference the next day and I just enjoyed being there. And I went to an Altium meeting a few weeks after that and I heard incredible words. They said, Rick, your father is an alcoholic. He is not a bad man. Listen to that.

Rick, your father is an alcoholic. He is not a bad man. He has a disease. He is not a disgrace. Drink that in.

As a young boy, I absolutely needed to know that, and that's helped me a lot because there was, like, 8 or 9 more years of drinking to go. And the Alatine program brought me the Alateen Fellowship brought me through that. I I can't see that when I was in Alateen, I really practiced the program a lot. I don't know that it's possible for a 12 year old, a 13, a 15 year old boy to admit that they're powerless. They're just starting to feel it.

Like, I mean, it's surging through you. It's like, man, we're powerless like hell. I'm just really enjoying that. But what it did do was it put me in with a group of people who understood what it was about to live and love live with and love an alcoholic. My dad got sober when I was 18, 19 years old.

That was a great thing. When I was 21, they kicked me out of alatine. I loved alatine. A wonderful thing. Couple of times, my father stood up at these podiums and shared together.

What a great thing that was it to be able to do, to share with my dad about our own growth and our own recovery. I wish we could do that today. 6 years ago, on an Easter Monday, I went up to visit my father. And after 20 plus years of sobriety, I sat down to have dinner with him, and I watched him drink again. And that hurt.

And the relationship that we had been building as as me, a person in my own recovery, and he, a person in his, became strained. And I went back and I I phoned my sponsor immediately and she said, Rick, remember that alcoholism is a cunning, powerful, baffling, and patient patient disease. And so if you were here tonight and you were an Alcoholics Anonymous and you've heard your peers say, hey, buddy. If you go out and drink again, you're not gonna pick up where you left off. You're gonna pick up where you'd be if you had never stopped.

If you will accept an observation from the son of an alcoholic, your friends in Alcoholics Anonymous are right because he did not pick up where he left off. He's way, way farther worse than he was when he stopped. It is a particular challenge for me in my own recovery now to be the son to my father that I need to be while he is drinking the way he's drinking. But, anyhow, I reached 21 and they kicked me out to you and I found an Al Anon group. It was full of women.

It's kinda like my harem, really. You know, the guy had come in, you know, and my mouth would say, hey. Welcome. My eyes would say, get the hell out of here. Go find your own woman.

And I kinda hung around and around for a while, but god god had a lot to do with me before I was really gonna start to get this program. I really wasn't doing the deal. I was just kinda hanging around. I hung around for a long time. I really didn't I really never admitted that there was anything wrong with me.

I was always focused on them because it's easy to focus on them. It's easy to focus on the alcoholics. This alcoholic grandma died when I was 21. What about us? So if you were here tonight and you were in Al Anon, I wanna ask you a very simple question.

What's wrong? Why are you here in Colorado on a Friday night listening to me? Why? Why do you go to your weekly Al Anon meeting? Why do you get involved in service?

Why do you travel from all these incredible states here to Colorado? What's going on with those of us in Alabama? I'm here to tell you that if we're here because of them, we're gonna die. That alcoholism, the family disease is a terminal illness unless we treat it. And if we are coming to Al Anon to recover from something that someone else has, Al Anon will not work.

It can only work on one person. I've never met I have met a couple, but I haven't met many. I've met most people who come in Al Anon come in with this one focus. How do I get them to stop drinking? Whenever you hear anybody come in Al Anon and say I love this person, Their disease is killing them.

Is there anything that I can do to help them so that they will be healthy? We never hear anybody say that. We hear the online say, how can I get them them to stop drinking so that I will be okay? Right? That's the self propulsion of the Al Anon.

That's the selfish, self centered, egocentric approach to life that the Al Anon takes. We don't drink. We take hostage an alcoholic. We wanna keep we wanna protect them. We wanna help them because we really love them.

No. Because we wanna look good. We want to feel good ourselves, and that's what's wrong with this Al Anon that you're looking at here tonight. And that is a big, big pill for those of us in Al Anon. A big one.

Because it's so easy to say it's them because what they it it's so identifiable, But this is what we have to do. Now I always say, you know, there's no have to's. Well, I'll I'll suggest to you that there's one, that we absolutely have to cross the bridge from the side that says it's them to the side that says, oh my god, it's me. And when we get to the side that says it's me, we have available to us what I believe to be the single most powerful tool for recovery known to man and that is the 12 steps. Dale had some kind of inkling about that too when he wrote this book.

Page I'm looking for isn't in the book. Looking for page 81. At the bottom of 81, it says something like, the program works for both people. Have you got it there? What is the exact quote at the bottom of page 81?

Our design for living is not a one way street. It is as good for the wife as for the husband. That's in your book, in the AA book. In today's language, it's as good for the Al Anon as it is for the AA. But we have to cross the bridge before we can do it, and that's hard to do.

But when you do it, our lives change, and we can have the single promise in step 12 that we will have a spiritual awakening. If we have a disease, it has symptoms and they're identifiable and they're observable. Now I'd like to tell you about a few of mine. Partly, we call one of them people pleasing. It has absolutely nothing to do with pleasing people.

Nothing. It has everything to do with getting approval from you so that for a brief moment in time, I can feel like I belong on this planet. It's called approval sucking. Kinda take that in a bit because, you see, I am a selfish, self centered, ego centric Al Anon, and really pleasing you has no has no relevance to me. However, the way you look at me is of profound importance to me.

Or at least the way I perceive you look at me is what is of profound importance. So So if I can do things that will give you get get you to approve of me, then I will do whatever it is that I can do. Another thing we say that we have an Allen on is politely, we say we have low sense of self esteem. What what a load of that's a load. What I I I didn't I I wish I had I kind of reason up the low self esteem.

I didn't have any. I just man, I'm talking about the no kind of self esteem I had was this, that I'd be able to get my hair cut. I I did have some at one time in my life. And what happens when you go to the barber? You sit in a chair and you look at yourself in the mirror and there's a guy standing up behind you and he says these horrifying words.

How do you wanna look? Well, if you can't stand your image like I couldn't, you can't say I wanna look like this. I I what I wanted to scream was I just want it to disappear. Or I'd go into the store to buy a pair of pants. They have 3 mirrors when you buy pants.

I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand to use the telephone. I was afraid to call you for whatever whatever this was about me. I'd I'd be walking down the street and I'd see my like, you know, reflecting in a store window and I'd look the other way or somebody had pointed a camera at me and I'd make a funny face or I'd run away. I absolutely could not stand my own image.

That is not low self esteem. That is self loathing. Nobody ever told me to loathe myself. Nobody ever told me that. But dear friends, somewhere along the way that happened.

On the outside, I did the best to fabricate and manufacture to look as good as I could, but inside, I was a mess. And I was terrified that you're gonna see that. There's other things too that I this Al Anon did. And one of them, the absolute top of my hit parade for Al Anon symptoms is this one. I was not looking for someone to love me.

I was looking for someone to desperately need me. I did not know that. I did not verbalize those things. It was just some kind of unconscious approach to life. I've been in Allentine for about 10 years, and I met her.

And it was a marvelous thing and all the allemons kinda always get it when we talk about meeting that one person. In the way I met this one person, it wasn't even in face to face, it was on the telephone. And this was the circumstance. I'd applied, I was I was a music student, I was going out to study in in, kind of, in the Rocky Mountains in Canada, in in a little town called Banff. They had a marvelous music school there, and I had applied to go to this music school and I had been accepted in the program I I was apply I had applied to get go to and it was accepted to as a program for brass quintets.

I play the tuba and and we had these these 4 other brass players and the guy who accepted me said, hey, why don't you contact the other 4 people, have a few rehearsals before you come out to the school and you'll be that much farther ahead when we start the program. Now that makes sense. That's a good idea. I phoned 3 of the people, we made an arrangement for rehearsal, and then I phoned her. I'd never met her.

But over the telephone, I'm here to tell you that my antenna go right over the telephone line too. Kind of, like, it was a lust fest. This it was supposed to be, like, a 5 minute conversation to arrange a rehearsal. We kinda got into this hour long. Like, I was drooling practically talking to this woman and and she had done so many things.

You see, when you're when you're fundamental approach to life is as a nothing and you made somebody who has been places that you wanna go and has played music with people that you wanna play music with and has met people that you wanna meet and has done all these things that you wanna do and she's done it, it's kinda like and I found that starting to happen to me. And we started to talk on the telephone and never having met. And one day I'm I was at my summer job. I worked in the liquor store for my summer job. How about that?

The alcoholic father of a guy I knew and Al Dean got me the gig. So I was at work in the liquor store on this Saturday afternoon and she found me and she was drunk. And she said, my boyfriend stood me up. I drank this bottle of wine. Do you wanna come over?

I've been in Arlington for 10 years. A small little part of my brain went bad. Another gigantic part of my body went, yeah. No. I didn't know that.

I did not know that. I just kind of went and we started talking more and more on the telephone and she started telling me about these other things, like, like, you know, like, like, horrible things that happened to her. Like, you know, father beat her up and inside I'm going, oh, really? I can help you with that. I didn't know I was doing that.

But there was something something sickly attractive about it. She told me about her brother throwing her through a plate glass window. I said, oh, I'll get the bastard for you. And then it was amazing. And then this the magic day came and we were heading off to this school out in Banff or sitting in the airport in Toronto and I, you know, I was a very sheltered 21 year old guy.

I'd flown around and then talk to people about that this woman that I've been talking to on the telephone, you know, I found out that that that, you know, she was she'd been around. She was experienced and and I wasn't, at least not with other people. Said that in Iowa last week, suddenly went and so I'm sitting in the airport excited and in she comes. And and it was an amazing thing. My mother's on my right side, my father's on my left, and she kinda comes in and guys she was bouncing.

She had this beautiful black hair and it was shining. She had her suitcases in one hand and her trumpet together. We just kinda watched her. Just kinda come along where and she comes right in front of us and this big incredibly beautiful smile and says, hi and kinda leans over with her trumpets in her suitcase and, like, my eyes popped and my mother went into mild cardiac arrest, you know, my my father stopped breathing and I've been in allergy long enough to know I was about to have a spiritual experience. And I definitely wanted what she had in a way we went.

And it was powerful. It really was. And that's the thing about SCX. It is powerful. And so we got onto the airplane and and I ordered a beer.

And she ordered a beer and a second and a third and a fourth and a 5th. And if there's any one thing I say tonight that you can absolutely take to the bank, it's that she had 5 beers. Because if there's anything an Al Anon knows how to do, it's cap. That's right. In a day or 2, I saw I got what she had, and and it is great.

The hell of a band by herself. I'll tell you that. But, you know, but there was still my my sickness was still was kicking in, I'll tell you, big time. But there's something amazing that was about to happen because we'd play music and, you know, we'd we'd we'd do it and and then an incredible thing would happen. We'd have therapy.

And she would tell me her problems and Ricky Doodah would fix them. And that felt great Because you see if your fundamental approach to life is believing that you are a nothing, and somebody is coming to you with their problems and you are fixing them, and you have not truly accepted a higher power, and you need a power, this became my power. In a couple of weeks into this arrangement, Mildred calls it a parasitic entanglement. Heard another guy a couple of months ago call it 22, 2 ticks without a dog. She said these incredible words to me.

She said, Rick, I've been seeing a therapist for an awful long time, but I don't need to see that therapist anymore because now I have you. Put that in. Because if you're a nothing and she needs me, I'm not a nothing anymore, baby. I got her. And, you know, I'm kinda walking around, like, Bill talks about it in his story.

You know, he talks about he took his drink and he felt like he had arrived. I felt like I had arrived. I kinda walked around with my with my with my prize. Kinda like a dog catches a car or a boner or something. Yeah.

Look what I got. Look what I got. Put it on. What's he doing with this person? And then I got home, you know, like the guy who was my sponsor in Altadena at the time.

And I said, well, Jerry, deep down inside, there's a beautiful person, and I'm gonna help bring her out. That I was gonna help bring her out because I cared about her? No. I just cared about me. And if I could do that, would you not look at me and say, boy, that Rick is one hell of a guy.

That was where I was at. But after a while, I was like a dog that catches a car. What do you do with it when you get it? You keep it, and you go looking for another one. And I finished teacher's college, and I found myself sitting in front of a principal in the inner city downtown Toronto school.

We chatted for a little while and he said, Rick, we have a lot of very needy students in this school. Brother, I'm the man for you. There's anything in hell around like me likes. It's a mission. Then he said, you know, these kids haven't been able to do a lot.

People really don't think that they can do very much. You know, they don't think they're that smart. And I go, oh, yeah? Just you ate. Now was I doing that because I wanted to prove to those kids that they're really smart and talented?

No. I was doing that because I wanted to show the world that Ricky doo dah was great. And if you could see that for a brief moment in time, I could believe that I was okay and I would not have to feel the absolute screaming inside. So 3 years later, these kids that couldn't do anything, we put on a show, fiddle on the roof, the whole deal. Kids played the music, they sang, we did that lighting, they stayed the whole thing.

An incredible show, really good show. And at the end of the last run, the principal called me up in front of a 1,000 people, came up to talk to everybody and after the last performance on the stage, called me up out of the pit. In front of all these people, he hugged me and he kind of pushed me back and he looked straight at me in front of all of them, he said, Rick, I've made a lot of decisions since I've been the principal of this school, but the best decision I ever made was to hire you. Yeah. That was a good one.

Last been a day for sure. And that's the thing about South Morogh Run Riot. And that's where I was. South Male run riot because I had not truly accepted that there was any higher power. I had some some big school learned concept of what a god looked like, but I had no experience of a god.

And I at this time, I had basically stopped going to Al Anon, and I was I I was becoming my own god, and I was finding things that gave me brief glimmers of comfort to quiet for a moment, the screaming that was inside because the alcohol didn't do it for me, and I tried it. I'm one of those sick social drinkers. Mildred and I Mildred and Mildred and I loved going to the symphony together. And after I think it was a year or 2 ago, we were after after the opening opening night of the symphony. You know, it's kind of those really swishy affair and you know, everybody's in suits and they they come around, you know, with champagne and and strawberries and chocolate and and and water.

So I have a strawberry with chocolate on it, Mildred has a little glass of water, and I take some water. And she looks at me and says, why don't you have some champagne? I said, because I gotta go to work in the morning. She was dumbfounded. That's the kind of drink I am.

The booze just doesn't do it for me. But what does it for me is this kind of stuff. That's about it. That's not the end of it. How about anger?

Anybody here an angry Al Anon got any angry Al Anon here? K. This is the only place on the planet where you stand up and introduce yourself as someone who hasn't had the plan of murder for 15 years, everybody claps. You talk about planning a murder in a meeting, everybody goes doesn't happen anywhere else. You showed up to somebody at work and they go, you are 16th son of a bitch.

Because we understand what that mania is like. We understand the insanity that says, I can't stand my life, and the only way that I can see it getting better is to kill you. It's what you call a desert issue of insanity. I think you know, I you know, we hear the definition of insanity that says, you know, doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. That's a good definition.

But I do propose to you that there is another definition of insanity and it is this one. That when we can truly believe that ending your life or ending mine is a legitimate solution to my problem. I am truly insane. My anger problem kind of came out in really weird ways. I was standing alone at my stove one afternoon.

Until I'm a bachelor, I was making a fried egg in the afternoon. Cracked an egg into the frying pan and I broke the yolk. And something happened. And I reached in and I grabbed that squishy leg and I threw it against the wall. And I took my finger and I went, ding ding ding ding ding ding ding on the stone.

And I kinda look around. I'm like, there's there's nobody there. And it kinda started to catch my attention. I began to gloss the water out of my water cooler and I was thinking, I just wanna throw this glass against the wall. Oh, I forgot to tell you.

I married that trumpet player. Go figure. Actually, this is the way we got engaged. She said, are we gonna get married or what? I said, yeah.

I guess so. 9 months later, I found myself walking up the aisle going, what the hell am I doing? Three and a half years later, she left. Me. I went running back to Al Anon and and and I was like a sick sick sick Al Anon because I had been in Al Anon and I was around in Al Anon, and I kinda went back and didn't forgot to tell people that I've been away for three and a half years and that, you know, I kind of knew the you know, I knew the lingo.

We didn't learn the lingo in in in Ellen real quick. It does not mean we are recovered. It just means that we'd listen and we learn the words. But we don't know it. And I wasn't living it.

You know, Sharon, I'm meeting one night about step 12. I'm having this marvelous spiritual awakening. I was the group representative, and now on this, we call you GSR. I was a group rep. And as I was sharing up with this marvelous spiritual awakening and how this higher power was my best friend and how I just hang all my trust on the hook of this higher power.

These 2 people next to me were playing with each other's shoes And a rage came out of me in my hour on meeting that I really had not known, and I screamed bloody air at them that I was cheering. Then I went back to talking in sweet soft, and bounced at times about this marvelous spiritual awakening. You You know, it's kind of this collective gasp where I am and then the the GR is killing somebody at the back of the room. They sure didn't want what I had at that moment. At the end of the meeting, nobody had talked to me in in in in the they they they were afraid of me, but there was a part of me that liked that they were afraid of me.

This is how sick my disease is. Because, you see, if you are afraid of me, I have some protection. Because if I can hold on to some of my anger or if I can just veil it And if you get too close, I can burst out at you and push you away, keep out when I wanted you to come in. So I've been having these odd things happen in my meetings. I'd be standing talking to somebody, and they'd be telling me what's going on in the recovery, and I'm kinda looking at them nodding and thinking, I'd like to put my fist right in your face.

That got my attention. Then I did this thing in the meeting and someone said, Rick, you gotta do something about that. And I was finally ready to do it. So I opened up the book, you know, and it says count to 10. In fact, if you got the kind of rage I'm talking about, count to 10 does nothing.

Just get you 10 times more angry. 9, 23, and by the 10 you hit the 10, you're ready you're ready to explode. And so I sought I sought outside help for my anger and for my rage. And I'm here to tell you that there are in are there are incredibly gifted human beings out there to help us with this stuff. There are.

And Al Anon brought me to the point where I just needed to go seek some help around that. And this guy did a lot of stuff with me, and I found out the root cause of my anger and rage. Because you see, in actual fact, my dear friends, I was not angry and I was not rageful. I was terrified. I was absolutely terrified of you any semblance or any perception of protection was to be angry, and that's what it was for me.

Knowing that the program has really really helped me to get through it, So I'm here to tell you tonight that I haven't felt like smacking anybody in the mouth for a long time, so please do come up and have a little chat with me if you feel like it. I promise I won't hit you. Just like in this section with this one little thing, remember that anger and rage has two sides, homicide and suicide. And other things too. Love being a victim.

Sweet. Being a victim is just really one of the most sick sweet things you can do. You just kinda wall around in this and and it's really quite pathetic. You know, there I was, like like, a 35, 36, 37 year old man blaming everything in my life on my father. And the sad thing is I found many people who would just, kind of, go along with that.

That's okay. That's okay. Man, that if you found someone like that, run from them. What we need is someone to say, hey. Don't you think it's time you took responsibility for your own actions?

I was a whining victim. What the definition of whining is? Anger escaping through a very small hole. And that was Ricky Doodah. Right here.

That's what my sponsor calls me. Ricky Doodah. Had some other things. I was a martyr. A martyr is just a victim with a mission.

Controlled everything around me. He's just like, see if you can control. See, control is just a really fancy word for I'm terrified. If I can control everything around me, I don't have to freely identify what's going on. And on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

And all these people are drinking around me, and it has absolutely nothing to do with my problems. As a matter of fact, I am selecting them because of who I am. I am not who I am because of them. As a kid, I was affected by alcoholism. That is true, But I am now afflicted with the disease, and that is called alcoholism, family disease, and that's why these 12 steps can work.

But they can't work alone. For a little too long, I sat down and kinda BS myself that I was practicing this thing alone, and I was practicing it with an idiot. The seminal moment in AA's history was not when Bill kinda saw that white light come through when he took his last drink. The seminal moment is when he met Bob in that gatehouse, and that's when it started, when one met another. And until we can really work with another human being, there is no way to recover from these things that I'm talking to you about because don't you ever dare tell anybody or help somebody reach the point of knowing what's wrong if there is no solution.

Because we're basically, what I've been talking to you about is step 1, that my life was I am powerless, absolutely powerless, and I was seeking power in every place other than in the right one. And my life was absolutely and totally unmanageable, and thank god there is a solution for that, but the solution must begin with me saying these words to another human being. Will you be my sponsor? It has to start that way. Now I was without a sponsor for a long time and Mildred actually has introduced me to my sponsor.

I have a long distance relationship with her. I know that our stuff says we men sponsor men and women sponsor women, but what the what it goes on to say is, but what really happens is that people sponsor people. And I was without a sponsor for a long time and I was getting sick as I've described to you and I needed someone to work with and I kinda come up with this definition of who I wanted to be a sponsor, had to be a man, had to live close by, had to be involved in service, had to be all this and this and this and this and I phoned up this one guy who kind of fit my bill and he said, gosh, Rick, it's good to hear from you. I haven't been to an Al Anon meeting for a while. Well, I'm here to tell you that if you're looking for a sponsor, there's a few requirements.