The St. Cloud Roundup in St. Cloud, MN

First time I heard Dave, our speaker this evening, when I was at Silver State a couple of 3, 4, 5 years ago, I can't remember exactly what year it was. And I remember listening to him and I remember thinking, we got to get him for a speaker. And so I think we got him the next year as a speaker at the same club around him. He so impressed me, we asked him back this year. And, we went and picked him up last night at the airport, and one of the one of my most favorite jobs on a roundup committee is hosting a speaker because you get to spend a lot of time with them and and share all day last night, all day today, and and we've become friends over these last couple of 3 or 4 years.

And and I'm just thrilled that he said he'd come back and and speak, you know, at our own at our spring celebration again. And there's a saying in Alcoholics Anonymous, AA speakers speak and introduce us introduce, so I'm going to introduce JP to you. I don't care if it works or not. I'm not gonna get this thing stuck in my eyes. My name is Jay Plumbach.

I'm an alcoholic. Hi, everybody. Is it working? Yeah. Thank you, Mary Clark.

That was one heck of a talk you made, and I don't know about anybody out there, but standing up here is really it's scary. I don't care how long you're sober. I don't care if you're male or female, AA or Al Anon. I don't care who or what you are. It's scary unless you're an egomaniac.

And most of it's a r, but ain't. But the deal is I got bad vision, so I don't know how many is out there. You know? I think I had laser surgery, but I just try to remember. Like, you can't see.

It's okay. One time, they said pretend they're all naked. Well, for me, that don't work. But thank you for sharing. Good message.

When I said I'm Jay and I'm an alcoholic, I really said all I have to say. Because today I do know who I am and what I am and I'm comfortable with that, but you gave me that comfort. Like most people get behind the podium, there are a lot of things I'd rather be doing right now. This is bike week in Myrtle Beach. I ride a Harley.

I live down there. There's 600,000 bikes that could be just lost in that crowd trying to get killed, but we don't wear helmets. But I'm honored and privileged to be here. Privileged. I met a lady here that I met a number of years ago when I talked up here and she's been sober from then till now.

And she said she was 8 days sober. I remember meeting her, she was 8 days sober, not because she met me, but I mean, she was 8 days sober and now a number of years of sobriety, continuous sobriety. Again, proof to me that Alcoholics Anonymous works. I remember meeting Susie when I talked up at St. Cloud.

I couldn't remember who was on the program, I remember a little bit, I didn't remember where I was, I didn't remember with St. Cloud or whatever. But I remember there was a girl there who's been having trouble and we talked and we've gone out to eat a whole bunch of us from the committee and I remember that and I remember telling her get a sponsor. Before you leave, get a sponsor. She got one, never used her from then.

I know we've seen her, but the deal was I'm saying God has blessed me today. Then I'm not thinking about do I have any money? Do I have any of this? Is my health all right? Is this going to work out?

I'm really more and more God's allowed me to be able to try and pick up somebody else. That ain't natural for a guy like me. You see, I'm a normal person. I never planned on being an alcoholic. Just planned on being normal all my life.

That's what I was, normal. Hell, I didn't know I was mad till I was sober a year and a half. Well, really, I mean, I came from a normal family. My daddy was a news commentator for CBS. He had a coast to coast radio hookup.

He was known all over the Midwest, really well known in the Northern Ohio area and over towards Chicago. But anyhow, his picture was on buses, not milk cartons, but buses, you know, in that billboard. Made a lot of money. I never saw the results of any of that money, but he made a lot of money and he was important and let everybody know it. My daddy was also an alcoholic.

I didn't know that. I thought he was normal. He always drank, never saw him not drinking. He drank from the first remembrance until he just drank. I'd see him in the morning drinking.

If he got up at 4:30 to go to work, he had vodka in his hand. When he came home at 2:30, he was drinking vodka. We went to church, he had vodka. He just always drank. Never saw him drunk.

He just always drank. I thought it was normal. That was normal drinking to me. And I was a normal kid. I was over a year and a half sitting in the meeting with Alcoholics Anonymous.

And you have to picture this, I was almost 33 years old, been over a year and a half active and I was really a poster child in Alcoholics Anonymous is what I was. You could have seen a picture of me. Well, I've done everything in that group. I joined that group. It was in the West Speranza Group in West Palm Beach, Florida.

My first job was greeter. I got to say hello to people when they come in. Then I graduated, got to work ashtrays. That's the next level of responsibility. All the groups had ashtrays glass ones and you washed them.

We have ceramic cups, not just Styrofoam that rules the environment like I care. But I got to watch coffee cups after the after. Well, I mixed the coffee cups and ashtray together because I didn't really like the group. They didn't know it then. Just take your shots when you can.

I got to make coffee, not very good, but I got to make it and got the chair of me. I've done everything in that group except treasurer. I never have been treasurer. I'm sober since March 8, 1974 through God's grace and miracle this program I've had to drink from Wendell now, But I've never been treasurer. I'm always hoping my group will hear that one day and maybe the state treasurer, it would be nice.

They have a lot of money, but I guess, well, no. Anyhow, I've done everything in AA except for the steps. And I've sitting there, that group was a big book group. We studied the book and talked about it. And I can't remember what part we were on that night, but I repeated something as though we're original and coming from me.

But it wasn't mine, it was something I heard across town a day or 2 before as I was practicing up what I was going to say at that meeting. But I espouse his wisdom in a at the group. And that night after the meeting, a man took me aside. His name was John. And John put his arm around me and he told me that he loved me.

And he told me that I was a phony and I was about to get drunk. And I hated John. And he took me home with him that night, sat me down on the stoop of his trailer pardon me, his mobile home manufacturer. I had a 4,000 square foot on a house on a golf course, and at that time, there were trailers. Today, I live in 1.

They're a manufactured home. Well, think about perspective. But he set me down on a stupid effing and he began to talk to me about Alcoholics Anonymous. And I thought I had worked the steps in my life, because I'd used the book as a guide and I'd worked the steps. And I knew what it said in that book.

The book says long before it gets to chapter 5, there's a paragraph in there that the delusion that I am like everybody, like normal people when it comes to drinking must be smashed. And then it states, this is the first step in recovery. And I took that to heart and said that was the first step. I knew that my drinking was different than other people. I knew that I had I accepted what the doctors said in the doctors' opinion.

I had that obsession of the mind, that thing that went on inside of me that said this time I can take a drink and I'll be all right. This time I'll take a drink and I won't go to jail or I won't hurt her or I won't do that or I won't go there. But I take that drink and I do that because my mind would tell me that it'd be alright and I believe and I take that drink and that second thing would happen. It only happens to alcoholics. It does not happen to normal drink, but that allergy kicked in.

That phenomena, you know, that thing that we can't understand what it is but it kicked in and I wouldn't know how much I drink. Nothing going on. I knew that was there. So, I accepted that I had this thing called alcoholism. And I thought the first step was admitting that I wasn't like normal people in a candy drinker, that I had this phenomena of craving that is obsession of the mind.

That wasn't the first step. John explained to me that, that was only the first half of the first step. And John talked to me that night about our unmanageability, and he had me look at my life. And let me tell you how my life was 1.5 years sober without alcohol, active in AA. It was a disaster.

My wife and I had a terrible relationship. We've been married for over 10 years at that time and our marriage had nothing in it, absolutely nothing. It was so bad that I was the most active member of Sex Without Partners in South Florida. I don't know if that's reached up here yet if it's self help, it's down there. It's not bad.

My kids and I didn't get along. I was unemployed again. You know, I couldn't work on a ship because I was in trouble with the law. The law wanted me. You see, I've gone into business.

I have my own business. Lyd alphol, it's like to be in business for themselves and I was one of them. I've been on a merchant ship and been over a country called Sri Lanka or a salon, island country off the coast of India and I've gone into business with some other AA members that were in that group and they had the same life principles working in their life that I had working in mine. And we went into the importexport business. We were exporting semi precious gemstones out of Salon and importing them into the United States.

Now we've done all that without the benefit of licenses or customs or laws. So it doesn't call it smuggling. We call it business. Again, perspective. So I was in trouble with the law and they were after us.

I had a guy living in my house and I hated him. Him. My everything in life was going wrong and John was right. I was on the verge of drinking. And I accepted for the first time in my life unmanageability.

And John took it a step further. He said, look back through your life and see how it was. And my whole life was that story. It was unmanageability all through my life because I would my mind would say you can take care of this, you can straighten this out, you can fix this, you can make this. And yet when I tried to do it, it didn't.

He said step 1 simply is I can't. And it made it simple for me. That night I took step 1 sitting on his stupid hat trailer with him and said I can't. And he said now let's look at step 2. And step 2, come to believe that part later myself could restore me to sanity.

He made me accept sanity for what the book talks about. He didn't talk about the fact that I want to do crazy stuff. Hell, I still do bizarre things. I'll probably do them all my life. But he said we're going to talk about that strange insanity that proceeds with the first drink that manifests itself in that thought that goes on in my mind that says, this time, I can take a drink and it'll be alright.

This time, I can take a drink and I'll control it. This time, I can take a drink and I won't go there or do that or hurt them. He said that's the insanity Bill talks about. And that's what Bill stresses in the book in 3 or 4 or 5 different places. And when he talks about sanity, he says at the end of the promises that I read at so many meetings at the end of the promises, it says if tempted by alcohol, we react as if from a hot flame for sanity has returned.

So, John says simply meant sanity for me was that I would believe that there was a power greater than I that could restore me to that state of mind where taking a drink would not be an acceptable alternative. Simply put it, he can. So I had 2 things I was looking at, I can and he can. And at that point, we looked at step 3. You see, everything was out of the way by then.

Marie Claire talked about desperation. I believe there are levels of desperation in my life. And as I reach these levels of desperation that are directly parallel to those levels, plateaus of recovery, as I reach them, I have to do something. That first level came after the level of desperation that brought me to Alcoholics Anonymous. That level that said, I knew I I knew what John said was right.

I was gonna get drunk. And I accepted them that God could restore me to that state of being where taking a drink would not be an acceptable alternative. We got on our knees and we prayed that 3rd step prayer. And I remember John getting on his knees and he said, I'm going to get on my knees and you don't have to. And you know I believed him.

I didn't believe he was telling me to get down on my knees. It was my choice, but I felt comfortable getting on my knees and praying that prayer. He opened the book up, and we read the prayer out of the book. And the funny thing about that 3rd step prayer, there's no amen at the end of it. The amen does not come until the end of step 7.

John has told me that from that 3rd step prayer, the actions through step 7 were a continuance of that prayer. I prayed that prayer on a daily basis from then until now. Not that I'm taking the 3rd step every day, but it's a reaffirmation of the decision I made with John that night, a decision that I'd do what I was supposed to do to turn my will and life over the care of God. For me, there was absolutely no physical work in steps 1, 2, and 3. It was just getting to those points where I could accept what they were saying.

I can't, he can and I'll let him. When I got off my knees, John handed me a yellow legal tablet. And there were 3 columns on one side and the backside of it was a page blank. And as he handed it to me with a pencil, he said right down in the top left hand corner, I resent. And I said, John, I don't resent anybody.

And I didn't. I don't resent anyone. He said, write down when I hate. Well, I have to do that. Hell, I hate it.

Let me tell you what, I'm an author of that. I wrote down I hate it so hard I broke the pencil. You like so much? You see, hate is a funny thing. Maybe you ain't felt it.

Although by the last time, I think some of you have hate was a long feeling I could wear to bed. I could think about what I was gonna do to you for what you did to me. I could do to you for what you did to me or did to them. And as I think about what I do to you, I just get warm all over. It was a great feeling.

It was just fantastic. When I wrote down I hated, it felt good. He said who to put down first. He didn't tell me to look at my mom and dad. He said put down Siraj.

You see, he told me to go to my childhood, I couldn't have. But he told me to start today and work backwards because that's what the book said. I put it down. I hate Siraj. And when I wrote it down, I knew I did.

I did hate it. The son of a bitch was sleeping in the bed and my little boy sleeping on the floor. He was an Indian living in my house. I hated him. I hated him because he got all my money.

All the money I saved and put together and gone into business with, he had it all or they did. Them Indians I was in business with. God, yes. I hated him. I hated him because he wore a dress.

Didn't call it a dress. Called it a sari. You put a man in a dress, it's a skirt. It's it's a dress. I wrote it down.

John said it wasn't important if it made sense or if it was real, but if I felt it write it down. Who you hate and why you hate them? And he said go back through your life. You know, I found that I hate to run a ramp in my life all the way back to my childhood. As far back as I can remember, I wasn't getting what I wanted from where I wanted it or from who was supposed to give it to me.

Nobody treated me right now. My parents, not anyone. And it was their fault and I wrote it down. Anyone who hasn't taken an inventory, don't be afraid of it. We've been doing it all our lives.

When we're sitting in the bars, we ain't talking about ourselves. We're talking about them. That's what the inventory is. Talk about them. Get it down there.

Of course, a sneaky body, you got to do something else a little different. I'll tell you about that in a minute. But there I was back in my childhood hating everybody because I didn't get what I wanted. I remember things going on in my child. My sisters, they got a lot of love.

I'm 1 year older, 1 year younger, 1 5 years younger, a kid brother born born when I was 18. I saw my siblings get emotional and physical wealth for my parents. And I never felt that I got it. I never felt that I belonged. I think that's the part of alcoholism.

Yet it didn't make me an alcoholic. It just made me a mad young kid. And as I got older, I was madder. I was a liar as far back as I can remember. I never took a course online.

It came natural. And I think it's a part of alcoholism, but it didn't make me an alcoholic, it made me a liar. And I like lying. It was sort of like a gift from God. Whatever you wanted me to be, I could tell you I wasn't.

The deal with the way I lied is that I believed it. Whether it was in a job situation or relationship or whatever it was, I would tell you what I wanted to and I believed it. And the difference between my lies and the lies that you told me, when you lied, I knew you were lying. But I didn't know I was. And if you didn't believe that I was lying that I was telling the truth, I would fight you over it.

That's how fiercely I believed the lies that I believed. So I was a liar and I was angry and I was a thief. And I didn't picture myself as a thief. I guess I was just thought of the short fat Robin hood. I don't know why.

I might take some from time I turn around, I give it to Mary Claire. And I wouldn't do it so she'd like me. I do it so she'd want me run and accept me. And if you told me that I took something that he'd earned money and worked hard to get, I'd have said you're crazy because that never entered my mind. The book doesn't talk about that and specifically it says something like self centered is the root of our problem.

It doesn't say lying and stealing, but if I look at the root cause of it, what's the root cause of it? Self just self suddenness. It was all about me and I didn't know it was about me. I thought it was about you. So I was a liar and I was a thief, and I didn't like anybody.

And I hadn't even started that hell out before school started. I went off to the 1st grade. And I started in Ohio. I was was born in Cleveland, Ohio, a suburb. I went to a parochial school.

That means Catholic. And I had a nun. This nun, her name was Sister Lucy and I closed my eyes. I could picture her. She was like the first vision of S&M.

You got to picture her. I picture her a lot bigger than me. She had a black gown on. Went from her head down to her toes. She had heels on her boots.

She had chains and leather hanging down her thighs. She made noise when she walked. I was scared to death. I was 6 years old in the 1st grade and scared her. I didn't like lacquer.

Halfway through the 1st grade, they called my parents in. They we've been doing tests and all that stuff they do in the 1st grade, and they call my parents in. And I was standing outside listening to that conversation because I know I was in trouble because I was always in trouble. And I didn't know why, but I was gonna hear about it. So I'm listening to her.

She told my parents something that destroyed me. She told my parents that it appears as I was an exceptionally gifted child. And because of my intelligence and abilities, I'd be able to learn anything and do anything I chose to do. Now my ability to learn stopped right there, and I started getting in trouble. By the 2nd grade, I'm home in front of the class to class clown.

You see, because soon as I heard I was smart, nobody was smart enough to teach me anything. And I was getting in trouble because I couldn't listen to anyone. That was gonna be the story of my life for a good number of years. When I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, that's just what I thought. I knew everything.

How could you teach me anything? So by the 2nd grade, I'm home in front of the class. By the 3rd grade, more and more trouble. By the 4th grade, I'm running away from home because I wanted to be away from them. If I could just go somewhere else, I'd be all that.

If I could just go there, it'd be all that. It'd be different. Get away from these people that are hurting me and torturing me. I knew it. I couldn't talk to them about it.

They had me talking to other people even as a kid. They'd say, go talk to this person, that size of psychiatrist, that social worker. They didn't have labels like ADD. They just crazy as hell. And I go and talk to them.

They didn't give me no medication. They beat hell how many times and and this and then I'm on up front of a juvenile referee. And the juvenile referee before he sentenced me that very first time he labeled me, he told me I was incorrigible. I didn't know what that meant. It's a multisnable word means punk.

I just a punk. He sent me off to an orphan. I wasn't no orphan. Why would you send me to an orphanage? But he sent me to an orphanage.

There were no other orphans in there. I wasn't one either. They were just pumps like me. And the deal was it wasn't punishment. I thought it was punishment.

Their whole focus was to help put some discipline in my life and help me become a productive human being. I didn't know that. I thought they were punishing me for my behavior or for what they, you know, what was going on. And they say things to me that were crazy. They say, what's wrong?

I couldn't tell them what's wrong. I knew they wouldn't understand. You know, people that say just tell me what's going on, and I couldn't do it. You were talking about walls and funny. I know what they are.

You can't talk to people if you just know intuitively they don't understand. So I couldn't talk to anybody. To make a long story short, I have to stay in an institution off and on from when I was 17 and a half years or 7 a little over 17 years old, And I always wanted it to be different. From that orphanage, I got out of it and back on the street and then into a reformatory and got out of that. And at 13a half years old, I made a decision to drink.

Now mind you up till 13 or so, I haven't had any alcohol that I remember. I'm sure that I have, but I don't remember it. That was social drinking. Well, you don't remember anything about it. Didn't do nothing for me or to me.

Hell, I was married to a social drinker for 35 years. If you'd asked her at any point in her life, when did you have your last drink? She wouldn't know. If you asked her what it was, then she wouldn't know. Didn't do nothing to her or for her.

That was me till 13. But I remember situations. Mom and dad drank all the time. They had at dinner we had a little wine or a little beer occasion. They had family get together 3, 4 times a year kegs of beer and wine and mixed drinks and the kids all those kids get a little bit of what the grown ups had.

There was no significance to any of that. It was just a part of that social environment. Didn't mean nothing to me. At 13, I decided to drink. I don't know why.

If 2 was there, I decided to. So I knew I wasn't old enough. Hell, I didn't look 13. You gotta be 21 and a half. So I stole an eyebrow pencil for my mother.

I started getting myself a beard and a mustache. Not bad really. It's a dotted and right on. Looked like a 13 year with 15,000,000 blackheads, I guess. Probably gave me maturity.

Glad it was granted. I had it done, got money out of it first too, and headed down to the lower end of 25th Street. That is a skid row in Cleveland, Ohio. I knew that's where you went to drink. You get something to drink there.

You don't have to be in that certain age or certain nothing on a skid row. You're going up in them honky tonks to give you what you want. And we went into an awful, and we finally got what we wanted. Me and this other guy, we got 2 bottles of mixed screwdrivers and 2 bottles of Thunderbird wine. I clearly remember ordering, and I can only guess that the reason for the screwdrivers.

I didn't know what it was, didn't know what was in it, but the name promised something. I wasn't sure, but the 13 has some kinda well, I'm not sure, but it sounded good anyhow. And the Thunderbird, I know why I ordered that. Hell, I knew about it. They had a billboard on Scranton 25th.

It was the most beautiful billboard you've ever seen in your life. It was huge. It was bigger than that wall. Well, higher than that wall and as long as 3 or 4 panels and had this huge bottle of Thunderbird with this bird just soaring. God, it looks beautiful.

And I'd see that every day I go by that, and I love that billboard. That was what I learned in the place I've been locked up. They told me, what's the word? Thunderbird. I gotta promise something's gonna happen.

I'll defy any one of you to go home and do that in front of a mirror with a Muscatell or but it's it's that ain't gonna happen. But Thunderbird has some action to it. Things were gonna happen, you know, just promised it. And it was the price. It was always affordable.

You know, throughout my drinking, I found Thunderbird to be a be a very affordable drink. It was the cheapest stuff you could get really. If you go in a store and find it now, they have it on the lowest shelf. They want you to steal it. But we got that stuff and went out behind some bushes.

We started drinking. Don't know what we started with. Don't know what it tasted like. But I know what happened after we started with it. For the first time in my life, everything became okay.

For the first time in my life, the mysteries of life were solved, and I was at peace within myself. It was a fantastic feeling, and I didn't even know that it happened. But I pursued retrospect and looking back, I just see what it did to It's only in retrospect and looking back, I can see what it did to me, because I wanted it back so badly, I can never get it back that way again. And I don't know what happened that night, but I woke up the next morning in a way that I was going to wake up in over and over again until I got to you but I but I was taking that inventory I was telling you about earlier, had them people down who I hated and why I hated them. John does something different then.

He said, now go to each one of them and write down how it affected you. And we used the plan out of the big book, and I put down that guy, Sharad, used a pretty example. It affected my self esteem, because I knew I wasn't doing a good job as a husband or a father. It affected my security. Hell, I was brokered.

It affected my sex life. There was none. And I put that down as you go through the list, and I did with everybody on that list, wrongs others have done, real or imagined. And we're going to look for you were wrong, and you'll write that down. Now I looked at that situation with Suraj and said, what could I have done wrong?

And I really couldn't see where I did anything wrong. And I went to John with it and said, John, I've done nothing wrong with this guy. Can I go on and do the rest of He said, no? He said we go from this one and work back. He said, ask John for help.

And I have God to help me to look at it and see if there's something I could have said different or done different. And I tell you what I found. When I went over there, I was a marine engineer. I worked on ships. I was an officer on a merchant ship.

I was in an AA meeting, and I found guys with no principles. Like I said, that were looking to make a fast buck, and they wanted to do some dishonest stuff and so did I. Because I wanted to get rich quick. And I had absolutely no knowledge of gems or gemology or marketing them, and I went into business with them. My point in going into business with them was because they had a lot of money in Germany, and I could help get that money and I'd be able to steal it.

My whole purpose was to get something for nothing out of somebody else. And when I looked at my partner Ron and what it had done to him, I saw what I was looking for. I brought him out his country, because he was there on a Visa staying in my house. And the only way he was there was on a Visa. And as soon as I decided to get spiritual and work the steps, I pulled the Visa.

And when the law got him, he was going back, and he'd never get out of jail again. And if he stayed here, which he wound up doing, he would never see his family again. I had robbed him of that. Forget his actions. What had I done?

And I wrote it down. And as I wrote it down, a miracle happened. My hate for him left, and then black and white in front of me was what I was gonna have to do to amend that situation. And at a later point in the steps, I was able to do that. And I was able to find that in each and every resentment.

I was able to find my part in the wrong and in writing it down, know what I had to do right. It wasn't important to say with my parents. The fact that maybe they didn't do what I thought they should have done or maybe what the law thought they should have done in some cases, That had no bearing on it. When I wrote down why I hate them, then I had to write down my part in the wrong. I wasn't a very good son.

I'd stolen from him. I lied to him. I've done a lot of things that were hurtful to him. When I got to that part of the amendment, it was not gonna be that I was gonna tell them I had done those things. John said if you boil that down, the exact nature of that wrong was you were a lousy child.

What's the opposite of a lousy child? Be a good child. So my job for that amendment was I was gonna have to be a good son and do the actions necessary, not say things that would solve my soul, the style of my soul, but things that would repair the relationship. And that's what I'd have to do with that Syrah. But then I got through that part of the inventory and John had me write down my fears and I put them down.

And my fears were nuts. I don't know if fears were. I had one fear down there. I was afraid she was leaving. And I had another one down a few lines afraid she wasn't leaving.

Oh, no. I didn't have a girlfriend and a wife. I just had a wife who was the same woman different times a day. You see, fears don't have to make sense to nobody. They had to just be the fears I felt.

I put them all down. And I was simple fears and complicated. I just wrote them all down. When I get all done, John and I got on our knees because that's what the book said to do and ask god to take them. We got on our knees and asked god to remove his fears, and I got off.

My knees is still afraid. And I told John that. I said, what's wrong? I'm so afraid. He said, what are you afraid of?

For me, it was being honest, telling them I was afraid because I couldn't tell people I was afraid, and I told them that. So he said, what are you afraid of? I said, I don't know. And he just sort of chuckled. He opened up the book.

What a fantastic wealth of knowledge hidden in that book. In Bill's story, Bill talks about the fear of impending calamity. And John took those words that Bill wrote in that sort of gothic prose, and and he said that's the fear that something bad is going to happen and you can't stop it. It shows itself when there's a knock on the door and you don't wanna answer it. Remember, phone rings and you don't wanna pick it up, but an envelope comes and there's no return address.

It's I knew that fear. God, I knew that fear. He said as an evil and a groaning threat, our lives are shot through with it. That's how Bill writes about it. I looked at my life and saw how that fear had grown in me.

That fear of impending calamity had grown in me from my early teen years until it almost killed me by the time I got here. And we got back on our knees, and I said, god, please take it. And that fear was lifted. It hasn't stayed away from them till now. You see, periodically, it comes back.

There'll be a night I'm not sleeping. There'll be a night that I just can't go to sleep for a time going down the road. It'll just sort of come over me and it just attacked me. And I thank God for that. It's a gift when I get that fear because it means there's something I'm not doing that I should be doing or something I am doing that I shouldn't be doing.

And I have look at my life right then to see what it is and then try and give it to god and ask him to take it. And I have a simple prayer that I pray many, many times in many, many situations. It's simply, god, you take it. I can't handle it. God, you take it.

I can't handle it. And no matter what crisis is going on, when I pray that prayer over and over again, all of a sudden, I'm waking up. I tell Susan, I'm waking up or whatever's going on just stopped. It's just going on. My way of giving it to God is with that prayer.

I don't know if it'll work for you or not, but what the hell, try it. Anyhow, it's after that part of the inventory, Johnson, now we'll go to sex. Gotta talk about sex. Alright. That's alright.

Wrote down how I was, what I was. He said, okay. He said now he said he asked God for direction. He said people don't give you advice. Avoid advice.

The book said hysterical advice. Boy, the ones who like no flavor, avoid the ones who want all pepper fare. He said, you got to come up with a standard that's going to be good for you and God. And I wrote a standard down. I was gonna be the most faithful salesman in the world.

I wrote all this stuff down. I gave it to John, and he laughed at me. He said, you just wrote down a standard you thought I want you to live by. And the truth was I did. Because without putting John in that position that he would be my judge.

John said, god alone is our judge. He said, Now write down a standard that God wants you to have, that you will be able to live up to. And for the first time in my life, I wrote down a standard. It wasn't very much, but then again, it was everything because I had a standard, and I had never had a standard that was attainable before. I wrote a standard down, and I was able to live up to it.

And I was able to move on that standard once I'd laid a standard down. So when you're looking at that 4th step, all three parts of it, working with someone who's worked the steps the way it's laid out in the book. Avoid I'm not telling you what to do, but I tell you what I did and what I tell people to work me. If I tell you something that ain't in the book, don't do it. I heard that stuff when I got in the AA, he said, don't get involved for a year.

I went to my sponsor and said, may god, can I throw the bitch out? He said, Are you crazy? He said, Where'd you get that? He said, That's in the he said, It ain't in the book. I said, I heard it in a meeting.

He said, You hear anything in a meeting? I said, Oh, that just applies to single people? He said, Read the book. Read the book. I sponsor a lot of guys.

I don't tell them what to do. Hell, I ain't their judge. I ain't gonna tell them what to do. I don't want that responsibility. I had a guy come to me the other day and said I'm leaving her.

He called me 4 hours later, and he was freaking out. It was the same thing I had for fears. I understood it. I couldn't tell him to go where to stay. It ain't my business.

My business, I tell them don't drink and go to meetings. That's my business. I can tell you how not to drink and go to a meeting. I stay out of finance, stay out of marital stuff, stay out of I don't know nothing about it. Guys don't say I want to talk about relationships.

I said, well, who's that with? Your boss or your coworker? Hell, they didn't want to talk about relations. They want to talk about getting never mind. Every interaction I have is a relationship, I can work on all of them.

And one more important than another. And I haven't got some. I got to make mistakes, you're doggone right I am. And what does it say to do when I'm having trouble in any area? What does it tell me the book tell me to do?

Does it say peel another oilier off the onion? Go see a psychotherapist? Hell no. It says work with a drunk. Work with a drunk.

When all else fails, work with a drunk. Mary Claire was saying, I said, Now what did you do? Work with someone else that needs help. Get my head out of me and into you. I mean, I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

That was 13, you'd come off that well. I went back to reform before I had an indefinite sentence, say that until I was a little over 17 years old and ran away from there. Not because I was rehabilitated, but because I get out of there. And I went down on the skid row and got signed into the Navy by someone I'd never met before, pretending to be my father. And I went away to boot camp at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center just outside of Chicago, Chicago and Milwaukee.