The 60th annual Texas State AA Convention in Dallas, TX

He was so nice, I started looking around for the lilies or something here. I've gotta get the paperwork out here. I'm Tom Ivester, an alcoholic. Remember the primary purpose group of a in in in, Southern Pine, North Carolina. I was kind of gently nudged in the alcoholics anonymous, Groundhog Day of 57.

I don't know if I've ever said this before, but it, let me say it anyway. My last drink was on the 19th November of 56, but that was a no credit to me or a a one. I got locked up that day. And I really haven't had a drink since, but, my first day of recovery was, the first meeting in February 2nd 57. And I am deeply, deeply grateful for, for that.

Hey. That sounds like a long time, but I swear to God, it's gone by like a blur. And and, and I hope that I hope that your sobriety as you get on into it longer years, I hope it'll stay as as exciting and as enthusiasm producing as mine is. And if it does, you'll be a lucky person. But I am absolutely in love with AA today and, about as active as I've ever been.

I I think I've got more energy than I had when I was a pup and one day is gonna run out and I'll just blow right down. The, I wanna welcome by the way, I wanna I wanna thank folks on working on the convention that, absolutely great stuff. The greeters, the readers, the meters, the eaters. They just done a just a fabulous job. Even the committees that got into closed rooms and fought, that all of it has just been really, really good.

I also want to welcome, those who are coming new into Alcoholics Anonymous. And I hope one day you'll be able to say what I say today. That today I walked into this program was among the darkest days of my life. Little did I know that it was gonna open the door to the brightest, most invigorating, rewarding life a fellow could imagine. And so I welcome you to that.

Also welcome a heck of a bunch of folks to the 1st convention, to the 1st state convention. And, if you're anything like me on that, what this represented for me was getting started into a way of life in the convention area where my family grew. And, you if you if you really could feel this story from the other side, I tell you this, when I walked in today, I was the most isolated fella I've ever seen. Totally isolated. I didn't I wasn't close to 1 human on this earth.

And today there are few places on this earth that I can go and not have good close friendships, anywhere. And what a wonderful feeling. And a lot of that came from just coming to things like this and just just hanging out, mixing it up and getting to know people. Larry's right. God, I hadn't seen Texans for 2 or 3 weeks, I guess, since I've seen a bunch of Texans.

I'm about to go into a Texan withdrawal here. Glad I got here in time. I've shared a seminar too about this great bunch of speakers that just and Patty O' coming tomorrow. Patty is my sweetheart. She is a spiritual giant.

She's in a small body, but she is a spiritual giant. This girl got more serenity. I've watched her sit in spiritual bliss just watching a tree grow. Very few people have developed that skill and she'll make that sucker grow too. I tell you what.

But gee, my sweetheart, I'm looking forward to tomorrow. So let me let me tell you about raucous living and stuff like that. I was thinking about that. A lot of times we put a mouth on causation. You know, we kind of trivialize it like it's not important.

And, I'm not one who does it. I think causation is is, is quite important. I think you can live in it too long and get confused, but I think it's an important, element of the of the illness. As I want to visit just a little bit in causation before I start drinking because that's what gets me ready And, talk about some work because I'm I'm not naive enough to think that I bought my, my alcoholism in a liquor store or bar. You know, obviously there's more to it than that.

And so I was a guy like like every human being. I grew up in an environment populated with a bunch of folks and and it was filled with the kinds of experiences that everybody has where some things go right and some things go wrong. Some things are pleasing, some things test you. Sometimes you develop strength and ability to deal with stuff. That's been a good well, wellness kind of a cycle.

Sometimes they don't go that way. Sometimes we take shots and get hurt and rather than growing from it and getting past it, we'll tend to internalize it and let it get infested and start becoming a disturbing part of life. Yeah. We've got a name for those things. We call them defects of character.

And, they are significant, truly significant, both in the development of the illness and in the program of recovery. And that's why I just wanted to visit for a minute. Let me just tell you that just a couple of things. I'll I'll just I'll just isolate to a couple of things and then, and then we'll start cutting up with some booze and stuff. But I was, I don't like to admit this, and Sterling, no offense, baby, but I was born in South Carolina.

I hope I hope it doesn't fit in Sterling. It offended the devil out of me. I lived there till I got big enough to walk, and then I got out of there. And and don't go back often unless it's to do a missionary trip in to try to heal some heathens or something. I don't go there a bunch.

I got I grew up on one of those little didn't grow up, but I was born in early stuff, learned what cotton was, and I never wanted to see any more of it. But a little kid and a typical kind of a hardscrabble family trying to scratch out a living in clay. I remember that stuff. I remember particularly getting introduced to fundamentalist Bible Belt religion. Now that's a very, very active, very popular kind of thing for a lot of people.

And for a lot of people, it works extremely well. I just happened to not be one of them. And so I was hauled into church early on when I was defenseless and little and introduced to some of that rock em sock em stuff. And some people get into that just groove with it, but not me. When I looked at that stuff, it was puzzling.

Some of it was scary. A lot of it was just hard to tackle. And as a young kid, I came to believe that there wasn't much to it. And I'm talking about a preschool youngster, not a rebellious teenager. I'm talking about a preschool youngster where I recognize that there was just a good deal of that.

I didn't believe. And that is a tremendously troubling thing for most people and particularly for a kid that barely understands what he's disbelieving. But I had nagging disbelief about this stuff. And what went with that was a lot of the associated stuff, guilt, confusion, shame, embarrassment, fear, tremendous things that that resulted from that that were too bad to talk about. And I never talked about it until I got in the 8th.

All I did was just sort of internalize those things. And that just progressed into a life where if I had any relationship with organized religion of any sort or any higher power, it was an antagonistic relationship. And so that was just one area of causation. The other that was, a little bit of of significance in it. I may refer back to it a little late.

I don't know. But it was, in in the family deal. Yeah. I was born into a fairly typical American family, 2 kids. Used to have an old sister 7 years older than me.

And somehow we've become identical twins. Now we're the same age. Miracles of modern science, I guess. Well, we, we were scraping around down there. And one day I was sitting in the yard at the house, 4 years old, and my dad walked out of the yard, didn't know where he was going, but somehow I just intuitively knew he wasn't coming back.

That's a strange thing, but I could feel that, sense that. And he walked out and I never saw him again in my life except twice when I was a school elementary school age kid. Both times just very disappointing kinds of things. And so what happened at the conscious level, I just wrote that off. Anytime during my formative years or or even in the 1st few years of my recovery, if you'd asked me about that element of my life, I would have said there ain't none.

There's nothing there because I just buried that. But I'll guarantee you when a father walks out on a 4 year old son that doesn't happen without damage. And so what I did was just bury that stuff and and so resolved it with the things that we called defects of character like insecurity, shame. You know, anytime I get around people having a conversation about parents, I'd have to dummy up until I just kind of wrote it off. And so see those kinds of things, that's just a couple.

My mother remarried shortly after, so I had a replacement. It wasn't much to him. He was from South Carolina. You ever see people that you just flat don't like the minute you see them? I mean, it just and mother brought this little old thing home and he he he looked about like a fire hydrant.

Just little old, stubby, little old short, that his name was Alvin and it just fit him somehow. And I hated that sucker the minute he drove up. Now now my sister was 7 years older than me at the time. So so she called she called the thing Alvin and I had to call him daddy. God, I still get mad calling that thing daddy.

Every time I'd call him daddy, that blood pressure just go up. And he was a crumbum. I mean, he was just a gross slug of a man. He just you shake heads with him. You won't take a bath.

You know, he was just a he's a gross human being and, no class at all. Used to pick me up by my ears sometime in a loving gesture. That's why they look like this. I got serious ears. Lyndon Johnson would envy me with those ears.

Hey, bad now. My head has grown to fit them somehow, but these things have been this size all my life. Can can you imagine a a grammar school kid with something like this on his head? And, well, talking about causation. Now that'll that'll flit make you a little flitchy when when you're like that.

And and so, but anyway, that that was Alvin and, I promised myself if I ever got big enough, I was gonna beat that sucker like a drum. And I meant to do it. I really meant to do it. But I went off to the army and they fed me pretty good. And when I came back, I was too big.

I mean, you can't whoop a midget. I mean, David used to try to whoop some of them, but they wasn't right. And so I never forget to whoop the old fool. He died and was slow about it. And, only good thing I can say about there is they buried him in South Carolina.

Every once in a while, I'll go down highway 85. That's our our our interstate, and I'll just sort of go over there to that cemetery and make sure he hadn't clawed out or something. So anyway, I mean, that kind of sets you up. Yeah. When you get that, somebody said one time that we we're not different than other people.

We're just like anybody else, only more so. And I think that really described it. And so with that kind of stuff and just a whole bunch of other stuff, I was ready, man. When, when it, when booze came along, I was like the old man, When that stuff came along, it did something for me. I mean, it took an awkward gangly skinny, big eared kid with a doofus personality.

And, man, that thing gave me savoir faire. I don't know what that is, but it just describes it sounds like what I felt. And so I just off and running. I I wasn't somebody who had a drinking problem. Shoot.

I had a drinking solution and, I would have been stupid to not drink. Good God. That's the best medicine I ever had. The most reliable medicine I ever had in my life. Best friend I ever had in my life from reliability standpoint was boot.

Somebody said early, quit working for him. Never quit working for me. It just worked overtime and and it wore me out. Yep. So what I found was a major league solution.

I I would have been an idiot to not And so I just took to it. I fell in love with the with the booze in life, loved everything about it, loved the people that did it, loved all the trashy behavior that went with it, loved waking up strange places, which most strange well, I won't ever tell this, but I bet I better not. I'll just say that she lived in the far North and I woke up with her and she had dressed out at about £300 I think. I didn't know her. I got anyway, sometimes there's a downside to frivolity, and that was one of them.

So so so I was just I was just rolling. And, and I just crashed through life like that. I was just caught up in that kind of crazy behavior that I never did really achieve much in life. I never did lose much and never had much. Never held a job for as much as a year until I got sober except the army.

And I tried to quit that one, but they kept locking me up. Come get me, lock me up every time I quit. And so so finally quit kick, quit quit quit quitting and they fired me. They gave me a same kind of old man, got an undesirable discharge for alcoholism back in. It didn't have programs for folks like you do now.

And so I just was sort of crashing through life. I was the kind of guy that looked either impossibly good or ridiculously bad. I was the kind of guy that if I got sober for any period of time, and I'm talking a few days, I'd snap back, man. I'd look good. You know, most people don't think I'm 88 years old now.

God, I hope they don't. Well, I always step back good. You know, it's, it's had an ability. I don't know if it was just that malicious manipulative nature of, of guys like me, but I had a an amazing propensity for getting overrated. God knows people just thought I was a world beater.

I've been overrated all my life. I still am. I mean, people think I know stuff. I don't know stuff. I just make it up.

You know, whatever makes sense at the time, you know, and often it's on target. You know, if I don't think about it too long, but think about it, I'll screw it up. And so I had that kind of ability. I was either looking like a world beater or looking like the world fell on me. And and so I just sort of crashed through.

And in the middle of all that, I developed alcoholism and I was extremely busy living that kind of life. So I didn't notice it when we cross that line from that wild crazy celebration or drinking or whatever you call it into alcoholism. I didn't I didn't notice anything about it. That's a fairly subtle process, I guess, because I didn't notice it at all. I was probably passed out at the time.

And, but but something happened that I don't fully understand, don't care to understand. I just wanna make sure that I never doubted for one second. I crossed the line from that kind of wild, weird looking behavior, just just wild, crazy party drinking. I crossed the line into a to a to a region I was to never leave. I developed alcoholism.

I don't understand that. I don't pretend to understand that. Don't care to understand that. What I know is that if my life changed in the sense is described very well in our book with a very polite sounding little sentence that I think is the best definition of alcoholism I've ever heard, that we are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. And I love that definition.

I think that's a very clear definition. Some people say the book doesn't define it. Describe defines it for me. And I like that because it has no histrionics associated with it. Has nothing to do with how much I drank, how long I drank, what I drank, what I did when I drank.

Has nothing to do with how many times I got my nose broke, went to jail, got married, got married one time for God's sakes to a woman I didn't even know. Now I tell you that'll that'll put a scrimp in your style and put a dent in your wallet too when you start paying out of it. But that doesn't define alcoholism. It just defines some bad drinking, I'll tell you that, but it doesn't define alcoholism. You know, what defines it, and it's not whether I'm smart, dumb, gay, straight, rich, poor, educated, dumb.

There's nothing to do with any of that. It has something to do with something that happens on the inside where I lose the ability to control. If I take a drink, I can't predict what I'll do, how much I'll drink, what I'll drink, where I'll go and what I'll do. It it just is an absolute mystery. And I I don't understand that.

That I really don't care to either. I I you know, one thing about it, this doesn't yield to education. It doesn't yield to knowledge. I've sponsored people who were so brilliant about the big book that they could even talk about it when they were drunk better than I could. So Won't do it.

It just won't do it, Joe. It has to do with something more fundamentally sounded than just just just ideas and notion. And so that's what happened. I and I just kinda crashed into all of that. Now that from that point on, my life, it would never had been very reliable or predictable, but from that point on, it was Katie by the door.

And and and I didn't I really didn't notice what was happening because it it is a subtle process. But my life changed where I went from a young fellow that bounced out of school in Belmont and just just west of charlotte in North Carolina at 16. And then 8 years later, I was living up in the city of Flint, Michigan. I don't know why I went there. I mean, it's just where skaggy people went, I guess.

And it's just was a natural thing. Like why geese fly to Alabama or somewhere. I've got so anyway, I wound up in, in beautiful downtown Flint made Buicks for a while. Well, well, I worked in a Buick plant for a while. If, if anybody bought a 53 or 54 Buick, I'll talk to you about tonight's step.

And in that town, I I, I worked, I worked on regular worked till I till my reputation got in front of me. I wound up in a city of half a 1000000 people unemployed, darn near unemployable. In the last couple of years that I drank, I used to sort of euphemistically say that I lived by my wits, but that's not exactly true. I live by my lack of character. I know of precious little that a man can do that I haven't done.

You can you can believe that's no reverse macho statement that you have some discreet hoodlum gangster. I was a hopeless, helpless alcoholic and I lived by scavenging off people. I made a specialty out of, I was kind of cute back then. I mean, even hungover. So I I sort of made a specialty out of finding tenderhearted ladies that wanted to take in a quote border.

And, but downside to that too, I tell you. They, sometimes you draw one that you wish you had. And I had one lady that, really a nice girl, but she was weird. She she she learned of of a guy that could heal people like me. Now, I mean, even drunk, I knew better than this, but this guy's name was reverend Cadillac Jack.

I mean, come on, man. How many bridges you wanna buy? But she got into that, Reverend Cadillac Jack. Well, she was buying the stuff. And so I said, well, we'll go see Cadillacs.

Well, I ain't even been it now. It embarrasses me even to drunk to to be doing something like that. That dumb. So what he had and he laid the words on me and, read some stuff and he gave a prescription. I guess the kind of reverend gives and a hymn anyway.

His prescription was that she was supposed to wrestle me into the bathtub every day. God. And supposed to put I don't never understand this. Put bluing in the water. Bluing, you gotta be old.

Larry knows what it is. You gotta blueing, you put something blue in there and it makes stuff turn white. And I I don't understand. I tell you, it doesn't make an alcoholic turn white. Man, I come out here looking like a cold smelt or something.

Well, God, it's amazing what a drunk has to put up with this world. So anyway, that was just just one of it. And where I live was, it was not it was not Disneyland by any stretch of imagination. I lived in a in a I never would have imagined I'd wind up like that. That was a grungy piece of town.

And and in that, what I did, I mean, I imagine there's some statute that would say it was illegal, but it's not illegal in that jungle. I mean, it's in that jungle you either you either rob or get robbed. I mean, it is not crime as to food chain. That's just the way it works. You're either the rollie or the roller because somebody is gonna get rolled.

I I guarantee you that. And, so so anyway, that's where I wound up. Then, then it just, just about gave up the ghost. I'm not proud of any of that stuff. Not, not whatsoever.

Sold my blood $5 a throw. Not proud of that. I'd let them suck me dry if they hadn't had controls on that kind of stuff. And so I was gone is the point, you know, and I'm and I'm in my early twenties. And I'm at a point where my life's done.

Your alcoholism is not about the external trouble. It's about dying on the inside. And that's what's happening. I'm dying dying on the inside. And this guy in his early twenties, I got to the point I couldn't even stand to look at myself in the mirror.

I'd wanna throw up. The most dominant thought in my mind was why don't you just end it off? You know, that's just real, real, real social drinking. And and, so I just ran that string out and and, you know, it would be nice if if I could tell you that that I finally had enough call for help. Somebody threw me a rope, but that's just not so.

And and most of most of you folks are well aware that I wound up doing the thing that I I'm confident that that there isn't a person in this room who hasn't had great fears about doing the kind of thing, whether we're alcoholic or not. Probably the the people around the alcoholic just like Donnie, you worry about where your person's gone, you know, and and know that that good God, anything could happen. I knew I was capable of anything, but I never believed that those fears would be realized. I was the kind of guy to wake up in the morning panicky no matter where I was, would go out if I had a car to look and see if it was blood on it or anything like that and always just breathe a sigh of relief and go do it again. But one morning it was not to be that way.

I woke up in jail in Flint. No novelty there. That was a common occurrence. I knew everybody there. Most of everybody locked up and the people worked there.

It was a regular place. And so when I when I came to, I assumed I was in there for the same as always, drunk, hustling, scuffling on the street, fighting, rolling somebody, whatever, but always just petty stuff. And I assumed it was more of the same. And and when I was wiggling a while, jailer came by and I knew him. I said, when can I get out?

And and and he would normally say 10 o'clock, but that day he said, I hope never and walked on. And I didn't I had no clue what he was talking about but I knew he wasn't he wasn't kidding. I am serious as a heart attack and and she walked away. And then I went back into the tank and and some of the other guys and I guess had read the newspaper something. And the night before, the the bad dreams that many alcoholics had had become a real nightmare for me.

And I was greeted with the fact that the night before blind drunk blacked out driving a car down the main street of that city. I don't even know whose car. They're driving it down the main street of the city and ran down and killed 2 people whose only mistake was trying to cross the street I was driving on. And then, you know, the amazing thing is that that hadn't happened earlier. You know, I think when a guy like me gets on the street driving a car, it's like firing a high powered raffle down the street and hope it doesn't hit somebody.

And so that was shock, disbelief. It was not so much that I couldn't believe it. It's just that I couldn't handle it. You know, the mind will protect itself. It won't take in what it can't handle.

And and so my response was just to push it away and and just refuse to to accept the fact that gradually did. Only time I'd ever been in jail didn't try to get out. Nobody knew I was in there. I had family in North Carolina but I didn't call anybody. I didn't want out.

I wanted to disappear. I I didn't want I was ashamed to be breathing when the 2 fine young folks no longer were because of me. And so I had absolutely nothing. I didn't try to scheme. The the scheming was done.

I didn't try to scheme or figure out how to get out or what kind of defense. I had no defense. I couldn't even I didn't know what I've done other than what they told me. And, it just so somebody, one of the policemen for some reason, best I can tell, took it on himself. And I never have really tried to to to track him down because I suspect he wanted privacy.

And so he he didn't announce who he was. But he a policeman there called my folks. They learned they were down in North Carolina and told them that they had a guy up there in a lot of trouble. If they wanted to do anything, they'd better come on up. And so they did.

You know how families will tend to be. And, they came up. I didn't know how to tell them. I didn't wanna get out of there. I thought I was afraid to get out of there.

It was a shame to get out of there. I didn't know how to say that. So the guy of attorney had got to be released on bond. And and on 17th July of of 56, I was released from jail. Now I didn't I I did not consider alcoholism at any serious level even though I'd been thrown out of the military for it and I'd been diagnosed with it by everybody who ever captured me, but I had never seriously considered it.

What I did consider was that having done something as horrible as I had done, I couldn't take a drink. Just wrote it off that that's something I could not do. The guilt was too great. And I walked out, didn't know what to do. I'm, I'm just sort of at odds.

I can't sit down. I can't stand to be around people. I walk up the streets all night and about noon the next day on July 18th, I was drunk as a man could be and did my level best to stay that way till July 9th or November 19th, the date of my last drink. I hope and pray my last drink has been so far. And that day I finished a bottle of gin, went down to the to the court and and I really was not interested in a trial.

I just went to do whatever I had to do and to take the punishment. And, the, lawyer told me to enter a plea of stand mute, which means I've got nothing to say. What else could I say? I can't even describe my own crime if somebody has to tell it to me. And so we went through the, the procedures and I was found guilty of course.

I didn't have any doubt about that. They sent us to a max of 15 years in the Michigan State Penitentiary. And, man, I was not a neophyte. I was a neophyte about going to a penitentiary. I all of my troubles had been fairly minor and fairly local with overnights and county jails and stockades in the military and pea farms, all that kind of stuff.

It was always kind of lightweight stuff in it. But I understood when he passed that sentence what that meant. I knew it was coming. I was prepared as you can get. But when he passed that sentence, I had an instinctive, very human reaction of fear.

But at the same time, most real sense of relief I'd ever known because I knew it was over. It was over. I'm not talking about hope or there'll be help there. Nothing like that. It's just done.

It's done. And the next day, I walked in that place chained with some other guys with absolute conviction that I would never come out of there alive. And and I truly did not care. There's a there's a point you get that the fight is over and you just give up and just roll with whatever comes and that's that's what it was. I went in there and they stuck me in a cell.

I didn't communicate with anybody. I wasn't particularly antisocial. I was asocial. I I just didn't I didn't reconnect anybody, didn't converse with anybody. I never knew who was in the next cell or pay any attention to it.

I spent my time sitting at the cell staring at my navel doing anything I could do to keep from thinking. And one day I wasn't looking for anything. And I'll tell you this, and it's like our cpcpi folk and I wish we had stronger cpc and p I around the country because I think I'm pointing to Valerie because we got a desk in New York on cpc and p I and it's a vital thing. And and if if it hadn't been for something that looked very much like CPC work, I guarantee you I wouldn't be here today. If I had had if my coming into archives anonymous had required any initiative whatsoever on my part to make it happen, I would have never come.

If I'd had to ask for help, you know, we're real we're real we're real commonly very often say, well, if they want it, they'll come get it. Or when they've had enough, you know, they'll come. Well, you can thump that up. If you take that posture with it, I'll guarantee you'll go to a lot more funerals than anniversaries because it just is contrary to the illness. And certainly to me, I mean, I was just I I could not have asked anybody for a glass of water, much less to get involved in my life.

And and so what happened that that makes me feel that kind of passion for for for a c p c type work. A guy called me out for an interview and I've been interviewed by lots of folks, all my life. And and, this guy called me out, did the same old familiar family history type of thing in social history. And he got through with it, made the same old familiar diagnosis. And the only diagnosis I've ever had is, my god, you drink a lot, you're a drunk, you're a problem drinker, you're an alcoholic.

I heard that all my life and never meant a thing. Every time somebody would diagnose me that way, they would follow it with a wonderful recommendation like, why don't you quit drinking? And, that never made sense to me. That never made sense. Boo's the only friend I've got.

I'm gonna give that up. You know, I I it just never did. I I don't know if I was the village idiot or what, but I I'd never, till I was sober and I connected the first drink with where I wound up. I thought I wound up in those bizarre situations because I was just a worthless scumbag. I never thought that something happened to me when I took drink didn't happen to other people.

And so this guy got through with his deal and he said, man, you've had a lot of trouble with booze. And I said, yeah, Pope would have a lot of trouble if he drank as much as I did. That was just natural. And, he said something I never heard. He said, we have an AA group here at the institution and I think you ought to go.

That was just a conversational thing. It wasn't one of these capturing deals where they put a leash on you. It'd been monitored you forever. It was none of that. It just was a flat kind of a statement, just an objective kind of statement.

You you got a place over here. You ought to go over there. And then he sent me a note, just a little it looked like a telegram, little piece of paper about like that. It said, you can go to your you had to be on a list to go because if there's 300 members of the group, they just didn't have room. And and so he sent me a note, said you're you're cleared to go.

You can start on February 2nd 57. I didn't particularly want to want to go. I didn't particularly not want to go. I just was sort of, I was almost neuter about about the thing. I was past feeling it.

I guarantee you the last thing I wanted to do was mix up with a lot of frivolous people. I I guarantee you that. I didn't wanna get into a whole bunch of smoking, joking, and handshaking, and stuff. Isolation is a peculiar thing, and that's no no no no brand new information for for many of you I know. But it but isolation is a peculiar thing in that some of the things that are offered are not welcome to an isolated person.

They're threatening like shaking hands or hugging or I still get flinchy about holding hands in Lord's prayer after all these years. You imagine, well, we didn't hold hands in that joint. If you, you held hands in there, there is well, anyway, it's, so I but I I mean, I just didn't want to. If I if it had required an issue, I couldn't have done it. And so I, I went to that meeting, just just shuffled in and, it just I had no fight.

And I tell you, I never realized what that phase of my life, how valuable it was. Because there is nothing, nothing, nothing that comes close to the value of surrender. I honestly believe that every successful long term recovery grows out of surrender. It's not an academic exercise. It's not a will thing.

It's not an achievement thing. It's a surrender thing. And until I surrender nothing happens. And and so fortunately I was I wasn't in bottom because I was in the penitentiary. I was in bottom because the the my life had just culminated and I could I could see who I was.

And so, you know, the tightest prison I was ever in in my life was the one I lived in before I got in a a. I'd been in prison all my life. That other thing was just a cage. But prison of a life that locks you down is a different thing. And so I wasn't thrilled about going.

Walked in, huge, huge meeting. And, one guy spoke to me, I had an officer on the door, he read my name, Ivester. And I said, yeah. And he said, sit down. And I sat down and listened to my first meeting and and and thank God that I didn't fall in love with it.

I hear people and I marvel at them who walk in and they just say home at last. God, I felt like I was on the wrong planet. I didn't identify. Now granted I was fairly young at that point. I was 24 and 24 year old people were not showing up in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Not anywhere that I ever went. And, I was the youngest member in every every meeting I attended for for years, the youngest member in the entire state of North Carolina. I got so tired of people patting me on the head, telling me how lucky I was. I said, yeah, man. I'm on a real roll.

Yeah. It's a it's a weird place to be with you. You're the youngest cat around. Most of them are drunk more years than I was years old. And so I had a real, real problem since it suddenly getting there.

Everything everything about it looked churchy to me. And I had I had that deep seated thing I mentioned in the beginning that that was not casual feelings. That was a deep inability to to accommodate that kind of thing. You see, when I walked in, I I in the back of my mind, I said, this is gonna be a tent meeting revival. Sure as a world.

And sure enough, the first thing we did was pray. Pray. Same prayer we did here. We haven't got a new prayer in all these years. And the minute I heard that prayer, I said, see there, I knew it.

And, then they read the stuff. What did read good stuff like Bill read, read that sound like poetry. It is stuff we read or or scriptures or stuff. Yeah. And I I didn't know that was a program.

And and and then they speaker and, I really enjoyed the delegates panel today that you were on with about the the delegates panel that was really good. The first guy that spoke the man that spoke at my first meeting was the delegate for the state of Michigan that when I heard him speak, I thought he was an escapee from a nut house or something. I mean, it doesn't make you crazy to be a delegate. You only have to be crazy to be a delegate. You know, it helps sometimes.

But this but this guy told his story. Well, I'd never heard of an alcoholic. I'd heard him tell stories, but not their own. And that that had to be true. Nobody's gonna make that up.

But I I've sat there listening to that man, and I'm thinking, what on earth is wrong with him undressing in front of 300 hair legged convicts made no sense to me. And, when I left there, I was more bewildered, but I was probably I didn't wrestle with it, but I was probably more bewildered the next week when I found myself sitting back there. And no, you know, nobody's sitting for me. I didn't have to go. They wouldn't have even known if I wasn't there or cared.

I was just another lost tragic face in a sea of lost tragic faces. But I found myself back and what drew me back I later came to understand, was that magnetic enthusiasm that imbued that man's life. He was the most enthusiastic person I've ever seen. Thank God for that. Thank God for enthusiastic people.

Sad sacks don't turn me on. And that guy was absolutely alive. He looked like a guy that was in recovery and liked it. And and and that's what brought me in. I did.

I would not come back for any other reason. I was fortunate in that I went into an excellent AA group And I'm talking about a group that understood the 5th tradition and carried it out as well as any group I've ever seen. Thank God for that. It was a group where they took the new guys that came in and would sort of channel them off into a small group and go through the steps, not working the steps like we do now, but just introducing to the steps. And that was valuable for me.

1st place I ever heard the term design for living. And boy, that made a lot more sense than heavenly magic show. A whole lot more to a guy like me. And I was introduced in a loving kind of way, not by rocket scientists or people from New York or state delegate, but other guys in the joint just like me. The only difference was that they were ahead of me and they learned something and they turned around and shared it.

I became one of those guys who was one of the leaders and and not too long afterward that. And so I I value that. I value that so very much because it it put logic in the picture that this is not some mysterious thing that descends on you, that the program of AA is a design for living. It's a it's a process where if we take the actions, we'll change. And what those guys told me I found to be true was if there's 200 words of steps, if you take the actions laid out in those steps when you get through, you'll be a different captain.

You'd be the same old guy, still be tall and ugly, but you will be a different cat. You will have a different mind. And and they and they said, and I found it to be true that motives don't even matter. Because if you take those actions to the best of your ability, your motives will change. And so I I take that literally.