Herrington Recovery Center in Oconomowoc, WI

Would you wanna introduce them? Wanna give a little Oh, really fun. Michael is near and dear to my heart, and he's gonna introduce us our AA speaker. So I'll turn it over to Michael. Okay.

This is a very special place to me for obvious reasons to my family. And to those who know me because this is where I started to get my life back, Beginning October 31st 2004. And to be able to come back besides it a month ago and and share a little bit about that journey of his life is is very special to me and and even more special now. You've all known Bob since sometimes he's one of the people that was on the rope that pulled me back from that place. The other voice that that helped guide me to that path is is that of Martin.

Martin's been around the program for a long time, and Martin is generous enough in that life to bring a lot of pizza back over to to enjoying life again. He's got a lot of experience, both practical and spiritualities. We kinda have to share it to you all today, so I'd like to use some money. Hello everybody. My name is Martin and I am an alcoholic.

And I'm glad to be here today. I wanna thank my buddy, Michael, for getting me in here, and, thank you, Dobie, for having me today. This venue is a little different for me because usually I'm at a closed meeting and usually just with guys. I made a promise to somebody before I came up here today to sort of clean up my act a little bit and that'll make them very happy. I drank a lot of coffee this morning and the good news is I have a bit of a bladder problem.

So I'm not gonna go on forever. You know, thanks for allowing on being here. Again, it's bearing witness to the collateral damage of, what goes on with alcoholism. Maybe it would be more tolerable if it just killed or affected us, but it doesn't. The tentacles of alcoholism just go on and on, and whatever our, pseudo life forms, concepts may be, or any of that, we could agree on one thing.

There's only 2 types of alcoholism, and that is untreated alcoholism and treated alcoholism. There's no such thing as serious alcoholism or chronic alcoholism. It's either untreated or treated. And, I have experienced both. And my actual goal here today is to try to add to or enhance any momentum that you, get while you're here.

So that when you leave here, you're going to have as much momentum as possible. Because while you're here, it's a learning process and, it's a protected environment, but, I'm here to report that the world hasn't skipped a beat since you got here. Whatever was going on in the world when you came here is still going on when you get here, when you leave here. So that's really my goal here today. Here's a little book, and you can get sick hearing about this book.

It's 164 pages, it's a survival book. If you wanna stay alive, you might wanna read it. It's as simple as that. When I came to AA, I didn't care anything about anyone named William Griffith Wilson or doctor Robert Smith. I didn't care about the Oxford group, the Washingtonians, that had no interest to me.

I have read this book and my condition was described in the psychiatric venue as being a seemingly hopeless condition, hopeless, hopeless. And, I didn't come here because I had a dilemma and a matter of drink. I was in the midst of a crisis, a catastrophic crisis. I knew I knew what the outcome was going to be. And I hate to tell people this, but, this is one that love isn't going to overcome.

Love has nothing to do with it because I can tell you as an alcoholic, I love alcohol. I loved what it would do for me, and any other loves that I had had to go if it stood between me and a drink. And the reason I drank is very simple. I spent a lot of money in the psychiatric sector. I've learned a lot about the exact reason I drank, and it's simply this, whether I wanted to or had the tools to interact with my inner self, Alcohol did that for me.

It took away the burden of having to do that. That happened at a very early age, and I have since come to understand when I discovered alcohol, I had a spiritual experience significant enough to have a psychic change. That did everything I couldn't do. So consequently, it lit up something in my head. I was imprinted.

My drunkalog really doesn't mean too much. All drunkalogs are basically the same as far as I'm concerned. It wasn't enough to keep me sober and not drink, so it's certainly not going to do anything for you. It's just another story. So, my focus is strictly on the solution because that's why I came to AA.

I didn't come to hear a bunch of drunk logs. I had my own. I mean, that was just the quickest way to put somebody to sleep. I'm not interested in your drunk log. What I am interested in is how to go from an existence into a life.

And, not drinking and being sober has nothing to do with sobriety. Sobriety is a whole different concept. I stopped drinking 100 of times. I don't think there's anybody in this room that's an alcoholic that hasn't stopped drinking hundreds of times. The problem is I suffer from alcoholism.

I kept going back to the same thing. I kept not drinking to make other people happy. Simply put, I'm just a nice guy. I wanted everybody to be happy. And, if I had to stop drinking because it was becoming a problem, I would be willing to do that.

And I did that hundreds of times. But, unfortunately, being an alcoholic, that wasn't enough to keep me from picking up the next drink. And if you did what I did, and if you do what I did as long as I did, eventually, no one cares whether you get better or not. And the reason for that is everybody disappears 1 by 1. Wife, wives, businesses, business associates, friends, relatives.

No one's gonna be around. That's the only thing they can do. It's either they're gonna die with you or they're gonna they're gonna leave. I've never met a dumb alcoholic. Never.

Because I knew exactly what I was doing. The problem was I couldn't do anything about it. Dumb means receiving information, not having the mental capacity to process it. I was just stupid because I had the mental capacity to process the information, and I didn't. And my alcoholism only had 3 tools.

And those 3 tools are defiance, arrogance, and contempt. I bottomed out 14 years before I came to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And most people feel, well, this guy's gonna bottom out and he's gonna do something about it. Not so. It took me 14 years after bottoming out before I ever came to AAA.

And you can say, well, what did you do and who? What was going on? What do you mean? What would you do? What I did was I was just merely a liaison between the normie world and my alcoholism.

Because an obsession is not a compulsion. I could use my intellect, I could use my willpower to beat that little bit of a compulsion. Anybody can do that, or I'm not gonna do it. I gotta go here. I gotta do this for today.

I gotta, you know, really get it together. But as soon as that was over, because I suffer from something called the obsession, It's a hopeless situation. From a psychiatric standpoint, I know there's 3 things that make me tick. That is the inner self, my id, along with my ego, and along with my brain. I know in my id, there's only 2 primitive things that are in there and that's pleasure and survival.

My ego has a job. It's supposed to make rational decisions according to the environment to dictate to the id. And once I develop a mental malady, meaning alcohol, that this is the answer, My poor ego is saturated with alcohol. How can it make a rational decision? Meanwhile, my id is saying this is the answer.

So this is a three way trap that is impossible to get out of. All the self knowledge in the world availed me nothing. I knew all of this, and yet I couldn't do anything about it. And it's the same with AA. AA isn't the solution.

I can tell you AA has the solution. Anybody that's married knows that love isn't really what keeps a marriage together. You have to wanna be married Because if love was the only thing that would keep a marriage together, everything would be hunky dory. You actually have to want to be married, and you have to actually want to quit drinking. If you don't want to quit drinking and you're here to make somebody else happy, it's going to work.

You're going to make these people happy. I mean, any tears that were shed in this parking lot when you were dropped off weren't tears of sorrow. I gotta tell you, they were tears of joy. They were tears of joy because people can get kinda used to not seeing us around where it's all this chaos and carnage. And that's exactly what describes my drinking career.

My whole drinking career can be summed up in 2 words, chaos and carnage. Eventually, people are gonna be relieved that you're not around anymore. That their environment is actually going to have some normalcy to it, where they do not have to adjust their lives because of the simple fact that I have a problem and I'm not willing to do anything about it. Because people get kinda sick of that. That becomes old head.

That's why we have divorces. That's why children don't talk to you. This is why we're not working. This is why the court system is involved in our lives, and, that much we know. And then we get into the yet syndromes, that, well, that hasn't happened to me yet because I can look out here and see a lot of people from Al Anon and such that, you know, people care care about us.

But the thing I only cared about was myself and my alcoholism. That had to come first. Now, I wanna say something that only alcoholics that are in this room will will appreciate. I could stop drinking, and I could do everything I needed to do on the home front, on the work front, as long as I had that first drink. I could do any.

I could even stop drinking if I had that first drink. Now that sounds insane. What's this guy's talking about? It's like someone saying, the only way I can save money is not having any. Well, what does that really mean?

It means as long as they don't have any money on them, they can save it. Okay, well that's insane. You know, as long as I don't have any money. That's the only way I can save money is by not having any. The only way I could not drink is by having that first drink.

You see, because when I got up in the morning, I wasn't thinking about what I had to do that day because if I didn't have that first drink, I would actually begin to hyperventilate. I would get a pounding in my chest. This was my fuel and my edge that I needed to not isolate myself from the rest of the world. And in doing so, alcohol was great. It did exactly what it did for me that I wanted to.

It made it so that I didn't have to interact with my inner self. I can just stand up here and tell you about a horrific childhood and all the events that happened, but I wanted to make it perfectly clear anything that ever happened to me, anything at all was because of me, by me, and through me. It was because of me, by me, and through me. No other reason. No one ever chased me down the street, tackled me, tied me up, put a funnel in my mouth, and poured booze into me.

I made a conscious effort. Now my intent my intent was I just wanted everybody happy. I didn't get up every morning and say I was gonna be drunk. I just wanted enough so I could go out and do, like anyone else, what responsible people do. Go to work, come home, be a loving husband, and make everybody happy.

I can't make anybody happy. I have enough problems trying to make myself happy. And what I know is I can't outsource this problem. A lot of different things can provide me information that can help me solve this problem. This problem started with me and it ended with me.

I had a lot of help along the way because information is power. Because if you happen to read this book, it does say that power was our problem, the lack of power. And it tells us in the following paragraph, well, that's exactly what this book is about. It's about power, how to regain this power. This book is not about surrender.

This is a book about how to get power. You can't love this problem away. God will not take this problem away for you. I tried that. I lost faith in that concept.

I believe in a higher power, and I believe in God. But I never asked God to give me the strength to do this program. I just sat around and asked God to fix it, and, today I realized God isn't going to do anything for me that I can't do for myself. And if I can't do it for myself, I can ask him for that power, and, he's never disappointed me. And I didn't know who I was talking to or what I was talking to, but I'll tell you what did happen.

21 days prior to coming to this, program, I went on a sabbatical. I just locked myself up in a atypical type motel and just drank away. And, I did that for exactly 19 days, and I really consumed a huge amount of alcohol in those 19 days. And at the end of that bender, alcohol wasn't even getting me drunk. It sounds insane, but I drank myself sober.

I kept drinking it, and then I couldn't get drunk. I got sick, but I couldn't get drunk anymore. Alcohol wasn't working anymore. And that's another interesting concept. Well, I just wanted to go back to the good old days, you know, before this was a problem.

You have to understand the good old days is precisely what brought you to this point in time today. My good old days brought me precisely to this podium today. So it might dawn on me, I might just have an epiphany that the good old days weren't so great. Because if the good old days were so great, I wouldn't be standing here today. That's the facts, folks.

The good old days weren't great at all. And as far as alcohol working, the question is how would I know? How would I know if alcohol was working? What do I mean alcohol is working? Oh, the fact of the matter is what it did is it, made me oblivious to everything.

And that's exactly alcohol do that each and every time, and that was acceptable to me. And, I made a lot of bad choices and decisions but I knew exactly what I was doing. And what I was doing is hiding. And when I came to this program, I did steps 1, 2, and 3 before I even ever heard of AA. In fact, when I called AA, the first thing I hooked up was AAA.

They said, what do you want? You know? I said, well, I need help. And they said, why? Yeah.

You know, it's a wrong number. It's true. And this was an outside pay phone and, I called the AAA and someone answered. It was a gal. She said, what do you want?

And I said, I need help. And she asked me if I was drinking and I said, yeah, I was. Where are you? And I went to give her directions and they didn't need directions to where I was. It seemed to be a mecca for guys like me, you know, just a real blown out motel where guys like me would hole up, you know, notorious for that.

And I was told that somebody would be by there tomorrow. I said okay. And I hung up and I stood there for about 5 minutes and for some reason I called back and I said, tomorrow's no good. I said, I need somebody now. And To me, I understand what simple words are.

Now meant that very moment in time. You know? Not in the morning, not later in the day, now. I didn't know what was gonna happen, you know. I I couldn't think that far ahead to tomorrow because I knew I was facing something that was beyond anything I could defense against.

2 guys showed up in 20 minutes and they didn't say too much. There were guys about my age and they just looked at me and they said, why'd you call us? And I told them I need help. And they said help with what? Lots of people need help.

So what? And I said, I can't stop drinking. Well, it's kind of obvious. I had 10 half gallon, empty half gallons of vodka. The atypical scene that you always see in the pictures, cigarette butts and that blonde mahogany furniture from the fifties, you know, cigarette burns and as you know, and the kind of place where your feet stick to the floor and, you know, trash cans and pizza boxes, all that crap.

And they asked me a very key question, They said, do you wanna stop drinking? You would think that I would have thought about that for a long, long time. And, I didn't think about stopping drinking. I thought about getting out of the way I was drinking. That I really didn't want to stop drinking.

I just wanted to be able to drink like normal people because that's what I've seen all my life, people drinking with impunity. That wasn't me. It was never my intent to sit down, take a drink, had fallen down drunk, and have to be dragged out of a place. I was just gonna have 1 or 2 to take the edge off. If I was going someplace where they didn't have alcohol, I made sure I had it in me before I got there.

And I couldn't do anything as long as I knew that as soon as it's over, I can get back to doing what I was doing. And I've heard a lot of guys say, well, I'm going to do this just because I just want to get it over with. Well, when I hear that, I think of myself because if I'm doing anything and I'm doing it just because I want to get over it, just to be able to get over with it, that means I'm really doing it because I wanna go back to what I was doing. That's what anybody said means when they say I'm doing it just to get it over with because they wanna go back to do what they were doing. And for me, that was just to stay drunk.

But they asked me that pertinent question. They qualified me right on the spot in less than 4 sentences. Why'd you call us? Everybody has troubles. Why'd you call I can't stop drinking.

Do you wanna stop drinking? Well, I said, yeah. Because I was afraid to say no. Because I figured these guys were gonna go away. And there was something about these guys.

One guy didn't say anything. He just stood there and looked around, you know. And they said, are you an alcoholic? And I said, gee, really? I don't know.

The fact that my mother and father were both alcoholics, my brother was an alcoholic, all my relatives and friends because that's who I hung around with were alcoholics, the neighborhood was an alcoholic. The only sober person in my neighborhood was the pharmacist. And he was the only one that had a phone. So he had to stay sober. So if we got a call, somebody would run up to say, hey, you got a call down at the corner.

So life without alcohol was maybe some people. Maybe some I didn't know any people. So And I said, I don't know, how do I know if I'm an alcoholic? There's a million different ways to do it, you can have some guy in a white coat Harvard educated and ask you 500 questions and if you get 32 wrong, all of that. The only person that can tell you you're an alcoholic is yourself.

Nobody could tell me I was an alcoholic. I had to decide that for myself. But this guy looked at me and he said, well, I think you're an alcoholic. And I said, how can you tell? And he says, you look like 1.

I get a clue. 10 empty half gallons of vodka and a dive out motel, crap everywhere, shaking, sweating, throwing up dry heat. Yeah. Get a get a clue. You you look at 1.

You look like 1. Yeah. Maybe this guy's on to something. And he asked me if I could go to a meeting. I said, a meeting?

What what? What do you what do you mean a meeting? A meeting? I got a problem. Bring the guru out that's in the car and tell him what I'm doing wrong here so I can cause I'm a busy guy.

I don't have time. I lose money at meetings. You know, maybe you make money at meetings, but I lose money at meetings because I was a tradesman. You know, if I sit around meetings all day, I'm not going to make any money. And they said, well and I also had half a half a gallon left.

And they looked at that and, they said, well, do you think you can go to a meeting tonight? And I said, no, you can. And I said, well, we'll be back tomorrow. And I said, fine. And they left.

And, sure enough, they came back tomorrow and I didn't drink that half a half a gallon. I just looked at it and I was thinking about these 2 guys. And the next day, I couldn't go to a meeting. The next day I couldn't go to a meeting, but day 4, I could get where I could stand up, you know, and I wasn't flowing up all over myself and they showed up. And every time they came, they looked at that half gallon of booze.

They didn't tell me to drink it or not to drink it or to throw it away. And when they came there, I said, we're going to a meeting. I said, what if I dropped it at a meeting? Because I'll tell you, I don't feel too good. And they said, don't worry about it.

You know? We'll get rid of you somehow. I mean, that's but before we walked out the door, one guy pointed and said, what are you gonna do with that? And I looked and I said, what do you mean? He said, that ain't pointed that half gallon loose.

And I said, I don't know. He says, you think you want to get rid of it? Oh, my conception of that was that sure after it went over my kidneys, I'd get rid of it because I had never done that in my life. Any bar I ever went to, I'd finish all my drinks, and if you were going to leave yours, I'd drink yours too. I mean, that was almost sacrilegious to leave anything laying around.

But anyway, I poured it down the drain, standing right next to him into a toilet, and he said to me as I went down, he said, have you ever done that before? And I said, no, never. You know, what's the point? Why did you do that? And he says, Well, that's really part of your problem.

And I said, What do you mean part of my problem? Because I thought that was my problem. He said, well, we're just gonna go to a meeting. And, that actually became the beginning of a journey. And these 2 guys, I've later come to understand, they're referred to as sponsors and all that.

These guys were tour guides. You know, these guys were actually living in sobriety. They had worked these 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. And, they were about to take me on a journey, a journey to some place that I didn't even know existed. I had no idea about it.

In fact, it was a fearful place. I had heard about it, you know, life without alcohol. My drug use was very limited. I just fiddled around with some stuff, but, when I was shaking and sweating, I wasn't interested in smoking a joint or popping a pill. I wanted to drink, period.

And I had roommates that were drug addicts and they'd see me going through all of that and they would say, hey, you're crazy man. Why don't you just do this and you won't have to do all of this? And I would look at them and say, hey, man. You're nuts. That stuff is going to kill you.

That's the insanity part of it. Before I called AA, I was on the floor of that bathroom, and I said, I need help and God help me. I need help. That's the key. Because if you think you don't need help, that's fine.

I tried it my way for a long, long time. All I can tell you and bear witness to is, not that my way wouldn't have worked, but I need I need a lot of help to have it work. I didn't even know who I was dealing with, meeting myself, and this is a program of discovery. What I found out in this program is, you get introduced to a lot of different people and things, but mostly I found out who I was. And, I found out that it was okay to be me, that I didn't have to continue on an existence.

Lotta the normie world, and I don't say this as disrespectful when I use the term normie. The normie world, usually their concept is you have to die to go to hell. And, I'm here to tell anybody, and any alcoholic will tell you, that, all this partying that the normie world thinks we're doing, is not partying. We're we're smack dab in the middle of hell and we're still alive. You see, that's that's the problem.

And I'm sure there's a lot of people sitting here that, when you've woken up on a few mornings, you were surprised you were awake. In fact, it's happened to me many times that, hey. I'm still alive. Now what? You know?

That's it. Now what is right? I, was told in order for this program to work, anybody can stop drinking, anybody can do 1, 2, or 3. But I had to find, here's the biggie and here it comes. You have to find God.

And, I'm not a Bible thumper. You have to find your own higher power. I can't give you mine, but I can show you how to get yours. And the way I found a higher power, you know, I said, well, how do I find God? Because everybody told me God is gonna enable you to do this program.

And if you can't do this program, all you gotta do is ask God to be able to do this program. But how do you hook up with God? You know, do I have to read? What do I have to do? And what do I have to say?

And I found out. And the best way to do that is stop hiding because God isn't hiding. You don't have to find God. It wasn't God was hiding, I was hiding. And guess what?

That's when the work of this program really begins in step 4. Step 4. Everybody rides in in the same bus, you know, powerless over alcohol, their lives are unmanageable, came to believe our power, turn our lives and the will over to the care of God. You know, I'd say or do anything to bail myself out. But see, I want a permanent release from alcoholism and that's what it tells us in this book that you can become recovered.

I don't wanna be hanging on by my fingernails that it's 24 hours a day. If that's the best this program has to offer, is a 24 hour a day reprieve, I don't want it. I'd like to buy a super saver ticket and show up 30 days later and be able to get on a plane and make reservations. I want permanent release from this, and that's exactly what this book is about. And if you don't do anything else while you're here, at least read the doctor's opinion Because any momentum you get in here, you're going to need it because the real work starts when you get out of here.

The real work starts. You're applying for a job here right now. You're gonna get it, and then you're gonna be out in the field. You're gonna have to do something. You see, here's the whole point.

You have to participate in your own recovery. Me. I'm the one that has to participate in my own recovery. I couldn't do anything. So I asked God to help me, and I was amazed at what happened.

I'm still amazed because my life is infinitely better. I went from an existence. That's all it was. It wasn't even a life where I was enslaved by alcohol to a life, a great life. I know what it is to be happy, joyous, and free.

It wasn't what I thought it was when I came in here. Happy, joyous, and free was no worries, no money, all the booze, no responsibility. Out having a good time, free, not being rag nagged or bugged, do anything I want. That was my conception of the whole deal. You know, I don't want anybody to rag or nag me.

You know, whoever I was married to became the enemy, became the warden, became the vodka cops. You know? All my relatives were just rag artists. Everybody had a plan for me. They knew exactly what I should do.

You know, all that stuff didn't work. See, it was the only plan I could embrace the plan I wanted that worked. It doesn't matter what the plan is here. It doesn't matter what's in this world. If you don't wanna stop drinking, forget about it.

If you don't want to stop drugging, forget about it. It doesn't matter what the plan is. I mean, the only plan that's going to work is my plan. And my plan is I don't want to do it anymore. See, everybody's going to stop drinking or drugging in this room.

That's for sure. The only thing we don't know is if we're gonna be alive when that happens. But I can assure you, everybody's gonna stop drinking or drugging. The trick is to be alive at the end. And there is a grand prize to this whole thing.

The grand prize is, I got a life. Not in existence, I got a life. I got the same problems everybody else has, but now I can deal with them. At least I know what to do. How to deal with anything.

How to deal with getting up in the morning. I can actually look in the mirror and not have to look down. I know who I am. That's what you call happy, joyous, and free. And I can give of myself, give of myself.

That's very important. That's all happiness is. It's a simple knowledge that you can give of yourself in an honest and caring way. When I came into this program, this is what I was. I wasn't much, but that was all I could really think about was myself.

Now I can be in a relationship. I can respect the rights of others. I know what joyous is. You know, it isn't the dumb stuff I thought about. I know what free is.

You know? Free isn't just doing whatever you want to because that's what the Constitution says we can do. Free is having liberty. No, there's no freedom without liberty. Liberty is the right to choose, and as long as you're an alcoholic, you've given up that right to choose.

See, there is no freedom without liberty. Don't holler about your freedoms. Think about your liberty because freedom's a viewpoint without liberty. Whatever alcohol told me to do, I did it, boy. And I did it in a prompt manner too.

Nothing nothing started without that first. AA isn't a program for people who need it because if that would be the case 90% of the population would be banging on the doors. It's only a program for those who want it. AA isn't the solution that has the solution. The problem started with you, it's got to end with you, you can't outsource this problem.

I don't care what your resources are, You can't buy this. It's actually something you have to do. I don't like the word sponsor. Sponsor sounds like I'm a NASCAR driver and Coca Cola's gonna put a thing on my car and all that kind of stuff. You know, the guy that came and got me became my sponsor.

I looked at him as a friend, you know, because he showed up when no one else would. That's what happened. And, there's only 2 things that happen in AA. And, if you have any stick to it in this and, you show up, you're gonna find out what those two things are. He come there to get help.

That's first, and then, second, to give help. And, the first part is really the easiest. The first part is really the easiest to get that help. There's an army of guys and women out there that are that'll go to any lengths to help you. To help you.

But you have to participate in your own recovery. It's It's not a process of osmosis. A lot of guys come to AA to try to figure out whether they're an alcoholic. If when you drink, you cause yourself problems or anyone around you, there's a good chance you're an alcoholic. If you can't stop drinking, there's a good chance you're an alcoholic.

If you walk like a duck, quack like a duck, and your butt's waterproof, there's a good chance you're a duck. But I can tell you something. Arm confining yourself with the facts and arming yourself with the truth never stop me from drinking. Everybody knows what score is and everybody knows what they're doing. And even the guy at the end of the bar that's sitting there by himself mumbling looking into a drink, he's not insane.

He's talking to his master. He's going over the day. He's going over his past and his future talking to that drink because that's king alcohol. And, that's what I did for a long, long time. And, I can guarantee you what alcohol will do for anybody.

It'll be to contempt, the arrogance, and defiance out of anybody's rear end. I don't care who you are. Inevitably, that's what happens. And the good news is I was alive when that happened. I know lots of guys that aren't around anymore today, They've stopped drinking too.

The only problem is they're dead. And, I didn't wanna die. I guess that's why people are here today is because they don't wanna die. You know, I didn't wanna do it anymore. The only problem is I couldn't stop.

And, it's not because some guy drove me to meetings. It's not because some guy said, How are you feeling? What's going on? It's because some guy said to me, What are you doing? That's the only thing this guy wanted to know.

He didn't wanna know about my court cases, my financial problems. He didn't wanna know about any of that. He only wanted to know one thing. What are you doing, bud? What are you doing?

What are you doing differently today that you weren't doing yesterday? Are you doing what you're supposed to? Are you working these steps? Because if you work these steps long enough, you don't even have to work them. You don't have to live by this program.

Because if I had to live by the program, my whole refrigerator, I wouldn't be able to see it. It would just be a list of stuff on it. I live with this program. I don't even have to think about it anymore. Each of these steps have given me principles which I've incorporated into my in fact, they're a permanent filter to any and all information before it enters my head.

And that's what you call having the obsession of alcohol or drugs lifted, because that's what I want. I don't wanna walk around crunching my teeth, worried about what people have to say to me to set me off, you know. What are you gonna say to him tonight when he comes home? We gotta be careful. Here, you know.

What's gonna set the goof off tonight, you know. Johnny did this, you know, and blah blah blah, you know. You know, forget about it. If you wanna get better, you gotta be careful of what you listen to. There's only one thing that counts and that's the solution.

Because without the solution, what's the point? And I read a letter from a 9 year old girl and it was written to her father. And it says, dear dad, if you think you can do this, do it. If you think you can't, think again. There you go.

That's from a 9 year old girl. If you think you can do this, do it. If you think you can't, you got the personnel here. You got professionals. You know?

They're gonna push you right on the right path. They're gonna put you in the right direction. And if you get that momentum going when you get out of here, you better load up. Because I can guarantee you one thing, you'll get all your misery back. You know?

If you don't like what's going on here, when you get out of here you can start doing your thing again. And you'll get all your misery refunded. No questions asked. It'll be given back to you in truckloads. You know, it's an unconditional warranted guarantee.

You know, things work. Things work in strange ways. I knew I was coming up here And just before I came up here, I have 2 sentences, written to me. I'll preface this by 15 years ago. He was then a young man came to work for me.

He was 20 years old And, he was one of 3 three sons. His father was an alcoholic. He died of alcoholism. He died 2 weeks ago. And had plenty of money.

Plenty of money. The boys weren't hurting for money. I mean, they didn't have a lot of money but if they needed something they could go to dad Of course, he was divorced. Imagine that. It says, thank you for teaching me how to fish.

That was my dad's job. I guess dad wasn't around. Excuse me. It just says simply for 15 years, that I, was the closest to a father he ever had. That's the difference between untreated alcoholism and treated alcoholism.

And, the point to really ponder is, who's your kid going to address a letter to? Who's your kid going to send this to? Start thinking about it. It's a good question, isn't it? Point to ponder.

That's a point to ponder. Alright. Got any kids? You wanna be a parent? You wanna join the human race?

Keep going. Keep going. Find out who you are. Do the work. Suck it up.

There's a little thing I always use. I can't use it here, but if you're if you're if you're in need of a certain part of the anatomy and you don't have them when Home Depot runs a sale, go over and buy a pair. Because you're gonna need them. You're you're gonna find out. Ask God to help you because I I I just couldn't do it on my own.

If you think you can, good luck to you. You know? And, my definition of God is God's a force in the universe that's no longer greater than my mental capacity. No longer greater than my, mental capacity. I know who God is.

And, you gotta find out. I can't give you my guide. You gotta get your own. But, there's a way out of this, and, it's not a dilemma. It's a catastrophic crisis.

This stuff is trying to kill you, And it's not trying to do it in a very genteel, political, polite way. It's got you by the throat. Medicor, Roy Horn, Zigfried and Roy, that tiger had that guy by the throat. Everybody stood around and looked, all the handlers. What do you think happened?

A stagehand picked up a fire extinguisher and shot that tiger right in the face with it and he dropped right on. Everybody else was trying to figure out was he just trying to drag him away? Is he really hurt? This stuff is trying to kill you. I mean, don't sit around here and look at it.

I mean, what do you think has happened? It will kill you. They tried to kill me. It killed both my parents. Both of them.

I figured they were just casualties of the game that they went a little too far over the imaginary line. This letter says it all. Here's the difference. There's a way out of this and the way out of it is by listening to what they tell you here, getting that momentum, and when you get out of here, go to meetings. If you don't go to meetings, there's no I don't see any diplomas on the walls or any graduates, no pictures of them.

You know, the the the only monuments to untreated alcoholism I've ever seen are in cemeteries. I mean, that's where all the monuments are for untreated alcoholism. You know, I know one thing today that my buddy Michael gave me a clue about it that, you know, this planet is custom designed so I can live in it. This world isn't some place that I can't live in. It's been custom designed for me to live here.

And even if it isn't, evolution should have taken care of it by now. I'm standing up. I'm not on all fours. This is a great place to be. Free of the obsession of alcohol.

Free. That's what that's what free means. I have the right to choose. Raul and I and the people I've been married three times. I married three times too.

My wife says to me today, what was the matter with the 2 women you were married to? Nothing. They were just peachy. They stood between me and a drink. They had to go.