The Men Among Men's Groups 3rd annual conference in Reykjavik, Iceland

Thanks for waking me up. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Jim Leonard, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Jim.

Well, we come to the end of one segment of my life. Sunday morning at a with a group of alcoholics in a country that I had visited 50 years ago, but in a state of drunkenness. And to once again know that when I woke up today that I had a purpose in life, and all I had to do was to show up. It takes me a few moments to kinda settle, and so I ask you to indulge me those few moments. You know that somewhere I'd like for you to join me just in a quiet moment because it is my personal belief that an alcoholic died this morning someplace, or if not that, here in this beautiful island, a poor, wretched human being woke up this morning, and the only thing he or she was capable of doing was reaching for a drink.

For without it, they knew that they would die, or they surely believed that they would. And once again, this insidious cycle of the alcoholic will continue after some brief moments of oblivion, blackout, or passed out. And so while I stand here cleaned up and dressed and have the privilege to talk to some friends and new friends on this island, somebody may be paying the ultimate price for my sobriety. And although I don't know that individual, I must be aware of the existence of such a person, because that's how I have come to understand the nature of my illness and how I have been fortunate enough because of my willingness to accept what you had to offer. That today I can stand here before you, tell you my name is Jim and I'm an alcoholic, and my sobriety date is December the 28th 1976, where I too, many years ago, woke up in a Sunday morning.

And all I can remember reaching for was a beer bottle with a couple of cigarette butts in it. It was about that much beer, and I had to drink it. I suspect some of you or not many of you have experienced some similar events. The scriptures may be somewhat different. The timing may have been different, but that moment that we all experience, I've come to believe was directly the same.

And I must never ever forget that, not out of a sense of self pity, but more so out of sense of gratitude that people just like you in this room took the time and the patience with a wretched human being like me, and in your patience and kindness and compassion, and even when you are frustrated with me, was able to help me to stand up, then you helped me to clean up, and then you helped me to show up So that on a day like today, this man who was supposed to be dead can stand before you and try to share with you how you accomplished your work. For I am of the opinion, I was the type of alcoholic that needed something tangible in my life. And the only thing that was tangible that made sense, although I fought it, was you. These moments bring tears to my eyes, not of sadness. And it may be the closest thing that I know about humility.

I don't know. And everybody in this room in the next 24 hours has the ability and the capability of touching another human being's life. Whatever your opinion of yourself this moment really doesn't matter because you possess the one thing that I know that that every human being, every alcoholic possesses, is the deep desire to be useful and to try to live in this world that somehow or another through the magic and the miracle of life, we were brought here. I was found by 2 drunks in Weisbaden, Germany around about the latter part of 1976. There was one meeting a week, but prior to that, I was locked up in a psychiatric ward for 6 weeks.

You see, in 1967, I was diagnosed by a group of psychiatrists as being a sociopath, And the only problem they had is what do you do with a sociopath who is a member of the military and whose profession is a combat survival specialist. So what you do with them is you send them to Vietnam and let them take care of the problem, because you truly believe that as a sociopath, you have no feelings and you don't care. While that part may be true as far as a psychiatric diagnosis is concerned, what people did not know and I refused to let them know that deep down inside of me, there was screaming. I just wanted to be like other people. But somehow or another, along the way, I had developed this distorted idea of who I was or what I was.

And I was always caught in the middle of that egomaniac expression with an inferiority complex. If you were the best at something somehow or another, I had to be better than that. And if that didn't work, if you were the worst at something, I had to be the worst of the worst. And that created a tremendous amount of problems for me when people like you found me. I assure you, it was not funny for them people, but they were so remarkable in the way they treated me.

I don't remember much of my early days. I don't remember too much about my last 3 years of drinking. I do know, according to medical records, I got down to a weight of a £112, which is, I think, is equal to something like 50 some odd kilos. I was looking but skin and bone that the doctors had finally given up on me and said to notify the Red Cross so that my family could come and bid farewell to their dad as they lay in a gurney in a hospital bed in Wiesbaden, Germany. I don't remember or aware of any of that because of my state of mind was such that nothing was capable of being registered in this thing called my brain.

Somehow or another, I ended up after being restored to some kind of physical condition of 10 days or something, I was discharged from the hospital and sent back to my place of duty, which at that time, I had changed my profession in the military from a combat survival specialist. I figured that was too dangerous after doing that for 17 years that I ended up running NCO and officers clubs. And I deserved that break at court time because you have no idea what I thought I suffered. I was one of those military men that would sit at a hooch, as we called it, in Vietnam in a bar and get in drunk and have dreams of grandeur, that I was going to become the 1st Irish born medal of honor winner. And I considered a bar and, in my mind, could play out the whole routine, how I had saved my company, drew them back from the front line, then went back and single handedly fought the enemy, That I had been shot something almost, like, a 100 times.

And as in the movie, I would slump over with the flag in my hand and gasping that wonderful son, mother, please be proud of me and die. It talks about me in the last story of the big book that we like to refer to is how to handle sobriety. And I found out from me that that was one of the most difficult things that this alcoholic had to do, was how to handle my sobriety. To qualify a little bit, I'll tell you one story or maybe 2 of my drinking exit escapades. In a place called Rome, New York, upstate New York in 1973 or 4, When it come around to March 17th, which is now fast approaching, I had to show the Americans how as Irish celebrate 17th March.

What I refused to tell the Americans then was in the country of my birth, they do not have big drunken parties and frolics and all that. But it is a very solemn holy day that most people spend their time in church and with families get together. To be sure, there is an element of the population that uses it as an excuse to drink some good Guinness and black and tans and those wonderful things that gives us the the power of this tongue, as you say, and creates the bard and music. But in the rest of the world, it was nothing but a huge booze event. So when the March 17th would approach, my family would go into a state of shock, because somewhere around about 15th or 16th March, Jim Leonard would get up, walk out of his house, and you might see him again in 6 or 7 days.

I was still in the military, but I knew how to work the system. My military career was very lackluster. I didn't get many medals, or my promotion was not that great. Matter of fact, it took me 23 years to accomplish and rank what it now takes about 7 for the average person. I was never sober enough to show up to get promoted, nor did I care.

On this Patrick's Day, 15th, I disappeared. Manat went to Rome, New York, and did my silly thing, danced in bars, and topped up bars, and wore the silly hats, and began to try to sing Irish songs. And I've sung songs that I didn't even know the words to, but I just made them up. I spoke Gaelic that I didn't even remember that I ever spoke Gaelic, and I just did it. But these drunks didn't know.

They were just laughing their butt off, and I was impressing the hell out of them. But somewhere around about to the best of my recollection, somewhere around about the evening of 17th at some bar in Rome, New York, Memory disappears. We call it a blackout. And I don't remember what I have no idea what happened, but, apparently, 3 days later, I come to on a couch in a house at 3 o'clock in the morning or thereabouts. I know it was in the middle middle of the night.

And I don't know if you've been I suspect some of you have been drunk enough that if you're lying down on something and you're just drunk as hell, one of the most common experience I have is that when I wake up, even with that incredible headache and that dryness in my mouth, I'm not sure if I'm gonna get sick or whatever's gonna happen, but I do know I need a drink. But couch or couch or bed you're lying on somehow or another develops its energy of its own and it starts to spin. I see some heads shake. You know, that's a credible thing for a simple human being like me that I have that ability. And I wake up on that couch.

I also discover something else that was funny to me. All I had to do, even in my most grotesque state that I had to be in, if I took my right foot and put it on the floor, it stopped. You lift your foot off and you start spinning. Put your foot down. And it stopped.

And what I learned to do I think we alcoholics are very ingenious. What I learned to do was slowly just by picking my foot up and laying it down, eventually, the the coucher was on would quit spinning. And then I knew that it quit because my foot was to break. And I slowly started to rise up, and I still remember this, as drunk as I was and hungover as I was, I still remember this. I'm lying face down on the couch with the front of the couch to my right, and I start to rise up with this huge head.

And off in the corner, I see a light wood coming out of the kitchen. And I see the outline of the silhouette of a woman standing there. And I'm looking at her and I'm saying, god, my wife, she's gonna be mad as hell. But, you know, I have to have my story and I always had my story. And as I raised my head, I went, oh, and laid down again.

And I raised my head up and looked and she was gone. And then I started thinking, am I hallucinating? Once again, I laid down, closed my eyes, raised my head, looked, and there she was again. And this time, my sight was a little bit more clearer. She had on a gorgeous, lovely pink negligee.

And my wife, to my recollection, hadn't worn a pink negligee in 10 years. And I'm thinking, I finally made it. She has given up fighting me. And she's gonna come to me, the man of her life, the father of her children, and she's gonna tell me what a wonderful man I am. And in my drunken stupor, I tried to get myself prepared for that romantic moment, and I tried to think of somebody like Yates or some great poet where I could say those charming words, that I almost was sure that that silhouette of that pink negligee would slowly drift across the floor to me.

I'm telling you, I'm creating all of this, and it is real, not an illusion. And through the mist of all of this, which lasted just a few moments, but to me it was an eternity, And began to slowly rise up on the couch, and she started coming across the floor. The only light was the silhouette coming out of the kitchen and was against her. And here, I could see the negligee, and I could see through the negligee and the beauty of this darling woman coming towards me. And everything in my life of anything I was ever angry about or whatever it was was gone.

I'm in heaven. But as she got closer, I noticed that there was something in her arms. And at first, I wasn't sure what it was. But when she got as close as where Peter is right now, it occurred to me that what she had in her arms was not a bouquet of flowers, but was a double barrel shotgun. And as she got closer, the barrel of the shotgun became very clear because she's pointing it right at me.

I am convinced that alcoholics at moments can get sober in a New York second when confronted with something that they absolutely have no control over. As she got almost to the couch, I realized that the lady in the pink sweat pink negligee was not my wife. And the double barrel shotgun, I truly believe, was loaded. All I heard her saying was something, get out. She might have been screaming, but my head is not paying attention to what she's screaming.

My head is trying to figure out how do I escape. Now what is remarkable was, you know, there's a line in the big book, we intuitively know how to handle situations. Some of us drunks experienced that long before we got in. Because I stood up by that couch, I don't recall it, but I know I was pleading, begging. K?

Because it be I become aware that I'm not in my own house. And so I stood up and somehow or another, I knew to go left. And as I went left, the door to get exit the house was there. And I kept pleading and she kept doing this and saying some things that I could not hear. Got to the front door, reached the handle, pulled it, stepped back, and then stepped outside and closed the door.

It was a very cold night, probably the equivalent of something like minus 10 degrees centigrade. Rome, New York is one of the coldest places in the world in the middle of winter, in particular in this year, March of that year was very there was a later winter. There had been heavy snow and to such a degree that there were snowbanks of 20 feet high. As I stood as I stepped out leaning against that door, having an incredible sigh of relief that once again I had survived, that she had not pulled the trigger, that I had escaped with my life. And there's a thing that happens to some alcoholics that we can get so exhilarated, if you will, by the threat of danger.

You know, everything within us can react to it, and there's something to it. It's like a high. K? That impending danger. That after it disappears, the letdown is incredible.

But there I am standing against the door, I begin to notice my legs are beginning to shake and I'm beginning to slide down that door. Then I noticed something else. I begin to become aware of how cold it was. It was dark outside to be sure, and all it was was the stars. The night was clear.

But then I begin to become aware that it's very cold, and then I know that it was extremely cold. And the next thing I knew was I become aware that I was completely naked. Inside that house was my clothes and my wallet, but also a woman with a double barrel shotgun. We do make a lot of decisions. I don't care.

And here was my alternative. Do I gently knock on the door and say, excuse me? May I have my clothes? And I was ready to do that when that next thought occurred was, what happens if the husband, if he's in there, answers the door? This will not be good.

So I made the next obvious choice, as we called it in military, I made a calculated retreat, stepped back from the door, and said, okay, you can't go in there. I've gotta get home. So there I am naked walking down the little driveway with the car and get to the front and there was these snow banks. And I know I'm out in the country. I there's there's no city lights or nothing around.

And I'm thinking, I must get home or I'll freeze to death. And I decided to go down to the street and stand behind the snowbank and wait to see if a passing car comes by. And lo and behold, of all of the things that happened, off to my left is the lights of an oncoming automobile slowly coming down the roadway. And I said, good Lord, I'm saved. Then the next thought is, it's gonna be rather stupid to stand out there in the middle of the road buck naked trying to stop this car at 3 o'clock in the morning.

You know, it might scare the hell out of them and they'll just run you over. So, again, the brilliance of the alcoholic. I leaned over the snowbank, cold as it was, I didn't care, and stuck my thumb out. So all it could see was my head and my thumb. And so the car came by almost didn't stop and then slid on the ice and stopped.

And a miracle again occurs, and that's what I call them. Miracle are those things that I can't explain of why they happened. I shot out from behind that snowman, and it turned out that the car had 4 doors on it, and the back door was not locked. And I opened the door and dove in and lay on the floor. The people who were driving the car was a young man about 28, and with him was a young lady, I think, or somewhere around about 24 or 25, and all I can remember is them both of them looking over the seat at this naked, almost turned blue human being.

And in my brilliance, I said the following statement. Thank you so much. My name is Jim Leonard. I'm a sergeant in the United States Air Force. I'm assigned to a special ops outfit at Rome Air Force, bro.

A few hours ago, I was kidnapped and robbed by enemies of our country. I assure you there will be a monetary reward if you can take me back to the airbase. Do you know that's what they did? I was 40 miles away from the airbase. They took me to the entrance of the airbase, the air police came out, and of course, I had no identification.

So the air police took over and took me straight to the local military hospital. And while they were doing that, I give them information of my wife and family because I lived on the base, and they called them and brought my wife down there to to identify me as being who I was, claimed to be. You may not believe this, but I convinced their police, I convinced the doctor, I convinced my wife that I had been kidnapped 3 days ago. I still remember the base commanders, but not some kind of edict to be careful. When you go out there, you're liable to get kidnapped.

Our enemies are all over the place. Something like that. You know, somewhere, somebody had said that sometime that we alcoholics, the only difference between us and the average human being is that sometimes we will do when we get drunk or get under the influence or whatever it is, we will do things that normally most of us are conscious was not let us do in the normal circumstances. I believe that. I truly believe that none of us are made that's too strong a state.

Most of us don't intend to allow this thing called alcohol to take control of our lives the way that it ended up doing. For to drink alcohol was part of the social setting. The problem was I was different, and some of you the same way. That once I took that drink, I lost the power of choice about the second one. Now, from my own experience, I believe I didn't start drinking till I was 20.

I made a bow to my father when I left Ireland. And I came over to I had left school at 13, went to work because of the circumstances of our family was so dire in poverty. So I went to work at 13a half, and my mother would take about 30% of my little pay pay envelope and set it aside. And a few years later, my mother and father sacrificed what then those days was enormous amount of money to buy me passage to the United States. And so, somewhere in July of 1952, a young man by the name of Jim Leonard arrived in the United States with $6 and something and the dreams of being rich and famous.

Many immigrants, both Irish and French and Icelandic and whatever, have all had the same dream. What happened to mine? I give it up for a drink. That's all. I just give it up for a drink.

But if you were to tell me that I was giving that up while I was drinking, I wouldn't believe you. Why should I? And so my journey down this thing of alcoholism and in recovery has been both a painful or bittersweet experience. My recovery did begin in Wiedbaden, Germany in one meeting a week, and then eventually I ended up in a place called Abilene, Texas, where I joined the pioneer group. And finally, after my ranting and raving around that particular group, they had a group conscious meeting, and Joe Mack was elected to be my sponsor.

In the group I belong to, you didn't have a choice. Remember, I had lost the power of choice. And that's just the way it was. I'm not suggesting that's the way it's the only way. And Joe Mack, in his beginning, would simply say to me, Jim, you've got to discover whether you're an alcoholic or not.

And until you figure that out and come to your own conclusions about that, in spite of all the evidence, until you can honestly say within yourself, I am an alcoholic. I am just like you, and I want to have what you have now. He says, Jim, all the studies and everything else is not going to mean much. And the brilliance of AA for an self appointed intellect myself was I discovered the truth two and a half years after I was sober. And the truth is lined up in a simple state statement.

I am an alcoholic. I am powerless over alcohol. My life's unmanageable. Now I don't know about you, but I spent a couple of years digesting every word because I wanted to make sure I understood every word. The problem was I was trying to digest those words with a sick, self centered mind.

Until one day, Joe gained in his brilliance come up to me and handed me a dictionary. Go figure. And I discovered that my interpretation of words was a lot different than what was the common understanding of words. And by now, you've probably come to the conclusion, as I stand up here, most of you in this room are blessed with the ability of speaking 2 languages. I was blessed with the ability of speaking 2 languages.

The second language was something that you don't use in mixed company because that's the only thing I knew. But when you're in a jungle and you don't care about what the moral code is, And you don't care because your life is constantly in danger. So Joe gave me the dictionary. Every time I sat in an AA meeting for about the 1st few months, it didn't do too long, every time I swore, Joe would take out his little book. He put a mark on it.

At the end of the meeting, you'd tell me how many dollars I had to put in the basket. Sometimes it was a lot more than I had, and he said, that's okay. Just when you get your paycheck, put x amount aside. Because my language was atrocious. I didn't care who I was talking about.

Because what had happened was, in the course of my slide into the depths of alcoholism, I had lost all sense of dignity, all sense of respect, no sense of appreciation. In fact, the doctors in 1967 almost had it correct. It wasn't until 1976 that I truly did become a sociopath. And then the journey began, and powers over alcohol. It took a little over two and a half years for me to have come to this brilliant conclusion that if I didn't take the first drink, it was impossible to get drunk.

I have a woman friend in Charlotte, and this is a true story according to her, and I have no reason to discount it. For a month, I was laughing when, Bob was talking and sharing with you yesterday. She'd walk into a bar and she'd order 3 shots of whiskey. The bartender would look at her and she said 3, and he put the 3 down. And then she would said say, which one is number 3?

And he'd say that one. And that's the first one she would drink because she never wanted to get drunk, so she wasn't gonna take the first drink. I mean, who can think like that? The funny thing is we laugh because we understand. Understand.

We literally understand. Then I was faced with the nightmare after 2 and a half years sober of coming face to face with the truth about the second step. I had to come to believe in a power greater than myself. And here, Jim Leonard really came to the truth about who I was, not only physically, but mentally and emotionally. I would give up everything, but I am not gonna give up that one thing that there's something more powerful to me.

Because you had to prove to me that something was more powerful to me. And an atheist, a by a guy by the name of Bob, who is now gone sober 30 year 8 years, one night after a meeting on the second step, did more to open my mind to what the beauty of the second step was than anything else I was able to find. Bob come up to me after the meeting, and this was in Abilene, Texas. He was an avowed atheist, and if there is an atheist out here, I assure you I have as much respect for you as for any other human being who may be agnostic or a believer. For Bob showed me the truth, because he walked up to me after the meeting and said, Jim, you're really having a difficulty with the second step.

And I said, yes. And he said, Jim, you better find a power greater than yourself. And I immediately interpreted that that this atheist was telling me to find God. And my reaction was one of anger. Who the blankety blankety blank are you?

I'm nothing but a blankety blank atheist to tell me that I had to find a blankety blank god. And with that, with a smile on his face, he reached out and put both hands on my shoulder. And with his face this far away from me, he leaned in and said, Jim, that's the difference between you and I. I believe there is no God. You can't make up your GED mind.

About an hour later, because my anger and resentment at him for the audacity to talk to me because I was prejudiced in those days extremely. How dare he? Because it made no difference that then he was sober, like, 28 or 20 years, but how dare he? Thanks, Peter. How dare he talk to me about God, a person who believed there was no God.

What I found out, he did not believe in the God that I had experienced. The man was more spiritual and I hope I my dying days, I hope I can die with the dignity that he demonstrated. Surely, he believed in something, but it wasn't in the concept of the God that I struggled with all my life, the god of death. I've wore I grew up in a part of the world where you killed each other in the name of god. Thank God that that no longer happens as much anymore.

But the history of the Irish was one of great bigotry, not just the protestant against Catholic, but the same way. That's what I grew up in. And so when Bob was talking to me that morning or that night, all the rage of my past was there, but I couldn't connect it. And on the way home, I got to thinking. And I remember what was said in the 12 and 12.

AA does not demand from me that I believe in the God of your understanding. You give me the first greatest freedom a human being like me knew. You simply said to me, Jim, come up with your own concept of God no matter how simple it is. That piece of information begin to open the door in my mind to the possibilities of other things. I still struggle.

Believe me. The first prayer I ever said, sober, first prayer was at the insistence of Joe, was I prayed for the mother of my children one night. I simply said, dear god, take my wife tonight. That was my prayer. He never answered it.

She's still around. I mean, that's what I call the resentment prayer. And some of you in this room probably have it, but you see, it's not me to judge whether it's a resentment prayer because the issue I discovered in my life is not is not what the motivation of the prayer will be, but it's the act, the humble act of praying to something that I don't understand. And so along came the 3rd step, make a decision to turn my will and my life over the care of God. And for a long time, again, I'd do the same thing.

You I'm sure you've heard it. I'd turn it over and take it back. The truth of the matter was I had turned my will and life over to God and didn't even know I did it. That's all. I didn't know I did it.

I would never argue with God anymore. The truth of the matter was I was arguing who I thought God was and that was me. That's the only argument I had. And there's a little prayer or a little poem that comes out that I love it. I shared it with some of my friends here in the last few days, and it simply goes like this.

As little children with broken toys, they brought to me to mend. I brought my broken dreams to God because he was my friend. Instead of leaving him alone instead of leaving him at peace to work on them alone, I hung around and tried to help with ways that were my own. At last, I snatched them back and cried, how could you be so slow? My child, he said, what could I do?

He never did let go. The process of letting go for me was one thing that was ongoing. The only enemy I had at this particular point was not you, although at times you were the person that I would strike out at. But the enemy I had in my early sobriety was with me. For I was being molded into something other than what I wanted to be molded into.

I was being shaped into something that I didn't want to be shaped in. I was being created into something that I didn't want to be created to. I was afraid to become to believe in God because in my mind, I was gonna end up in Africa, saving the poor Africans. I still remember my mother and my grandmother when there was very little food to eat. And you better clean off your plate chains.

You know, the poor people in Africa are not having, Of course, you're eating because of guilt. I mean, that's all you're doing. You're feeling bad, James. I better eat. And so how do I find this and how do I deliver this human being, Jim Leonard?

How do I deliver him to this God that you've been so patiently teaching me about that sometimes I struggle with? And you simply said to me, well, Jim, first of all, let's define who you are and what you are. Since you think you know, you don't know. So therefore, we're gonna show you how to find out. We're gonna do a thing that's called an inventory.

We're not gonna let you do your inventory on your own because you're so damn self centered. You're only gonna put in what you think is very bad and you're only gonna put in there things that don't mean nothing, but you're not gonna put in the truth. And 2 men sat in a room with me for the whole day with a big yellow pad. For 10 minutes, I'm sitting there and this is the way I'd go. I'd write something and then I would either erase it because I couldn't spell the word right.

And they'd come along, what the hell are you doing? And that's why I'm trying to He said, just start. And they handed me a book, the big book. Can you try what they're saying in there? Well, I don't like numbers say that to our sponsor.

I don't like the way that's done. That's antiquated. Jim, you're not gonna like anything about recovery, so you may as well get used to this book. Follow this thing out. And then I would give them what are you trying to do?

Shove the bible down my throat? No, Jim. But if you wanna stay sober, we suggest to do that. And so I took that big book and went to those pages and then wrote down those things as best I could. Of course, I fall into that illusion that once I did that step, I had done it.

Every year on my anniversary now, I repeat those steps in-depth because I'm the type of person and murderer got to know me really well. I can't remember what I said 5 minutes ago. How the hell am I gonna remember the good and the bad I've done this past year? So I do an inventory. I go someplace.

I go on a retreat, usually with people like you. And I usually have follow the same thing. As the years have gone on, it's become almost second nature. And every so often, I go to the 12 and 12. For those of you who've been in recovery for a while, there's what is called the 50 and 50.

Begins in page 50 of the 12 and 12, and there's actually 50 questions. I've done them. And they only require simple answers, not analysis or not to find out the center of who I am, to play psychiatrist or psychologist with myself, is simply just to ask. And then the 5th step, I went to a priest. That's my sponsor.

I come from a different little take. I've never heard a complete 5th step. Many I think many people are better at it. For in all 5th steps that I've been privileged to participate in, there has been some issues that come up that I'm not qualified to address. I can empathize in most cases.

And because I am pretty well connected with people who understand alcoholism, members of the cloth, as we say, priests and rabbis, ministers and reverends, psychiatrists, psychologists, nuns, brothers, even alcoholics who I have great respect for, I'll say, go see Joe or go see this one, even after all these years. I don't know whether I'd do it out of false pride or what, but I know that when I do those things, I truly believe at that moment that I am doing the best I can. The 6th and 7th step was the most difficult of my life. How does one become entirely ready? How how does one?

And I struggle that. I don't think I finally got over that step until around about 12th year. I'm just using a date to give me some sense. I would I like the big book, and my interpretation of the big book skipped over that because it was only 2 paragraphs. What I discovered in the 7th step was a true measure of humility for me.

But what it said in there, and I'm paraphrasing, that the God that I come to understand, here I am. Take all of me and do with me what you will. Now the problem was I misunderstood that for a long time, and I thought by doing the 4th and 5th step and being entirely ready that I now was almost as white as snow and I was back to the innocence of a little baby of 3 months. And the only thing that god will say, look at my child, Look at my son by whom I am well pleased. But it's not that way.

There have been moments when people have looked at me and say, Jim Leonard, you're crazy. You're the most angry guy that ever walked. Why are you so selfish? Your pride is showing. Or my greatest defect, 2 of them, is envy and sloth.

I'm lazy. I was lazy at this program. I'm not as lazy as I used to be. What I want to do is to intellectually know this program, to take care of my mental illness. It was only later on I was getting to realize that in order to find emotional sobriety that they talk about, I had to find a solution to my emotional disorder.

But in the 6th and 7th step, I finally found out for me that I was prepared now once I understood it, that god was gonna use me when I was miserable and gonna use me when I was happy. People were gonna see me as somebody as wonderful and other people were gonna see me as nothing but a pain in the butt. And if I truly surrendered all of me to the god of my understanding, I was surrendering my defects and my virtues to a god who would use them as that god sees fit, not as Jim Leonard sees fit. I truly believe that I've in I've had an impact on alcoholics when they see the real me without any pretense. There's a line that or not a line.

There's a little saying that what I what I use with people, behavior never lies. I just lie about my behavior. And when I quit lying about my behavior, I begin to get a grasp of the sense of the 6th and 7th step. And so the first 7 steps in my understanding of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous was nothing more than me getting right with me and the god of my understanding. And now I had to learn to live amongst you, the 8th 9th step.

The 8th step tells me I must redouble my efforts at this constant inventory that I take. Other people do it in the 10th step, but to me, this is the way I found. For I will revert very quickly back to a character that I loathe. So I do a daily practice of my steps, not just one, but all of them. It says in this book that the only step you can do a 100% is the first step, but there's also a little caveat after it.

It says in order to assure yourself of doing a 100%, the first step, you need to do the remaining 11. All I wanted to do was number 1 in the middle of number 12 and walk around mister Aye. Some of you do the same thing. But here in step a, I had to make a list, as it says. But when I studied the book, I found out something fascinating.

What I really begin to discern for myself was the way that I really did look at people, whether you were Icelandic, African, Japanese, Chinese, Protestant Irish, Catholic Irish. I found out that in the 8th 9th step, that I at times would do what is called silent character assassination. We have a fancy word for it in the states. It's called gossip. See, anytime that I point out something to you, it is my, I thought, my demonstration of love and compassion.

You better straighten yourself up, darling. I need to tell you this because I love you. When you did the same thing to me, I called it criticism. I discovered I was doing that. I truly was emotionally the doctor Jekyll and mister Hyde.

And what I found out is the greatest trouble I had in my life, in spite of being sober for years, that I still had the battle, the one thing in the back of my head that I thought there was something about me that still was different from you. Until I let go of that, the journey of sobriety was always filled with some degree of frustration. When I got to the 10th step, I begin to understand why I had to go through all the things. When I say I got to the 10 step, when I really begin to concentrate on it, because I knew about the 10 step long before I really got into an in-depth practice of it. In the big book excuse me.

In the big book, it simply says somewhere at the end of the 9th step, At beginning of a page, it says something I like the spiritual the spiritual life is not a theory. I have to live it. Then you jump down 2 paragraphs in the next line that means something to me says, if I am painstaking about this phase of my development. Now I had to really concentrate on that word, I'm painstaking, because I wanted to do this deal without any pain. I wanted to get to a point that I thought that I would be immune from pain.

And when all you people came to me with all your pain, I would be the embodiment of Saint Teresa, Mother Teresa, Saint Francis, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King. I was the embodiment of all of that. Come to me little children and I will sold your soul. That's how I that's how I felt. Did I say those words?

No. But my feelings is a strong indication of what I believe. And then the 11th step, talk through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with the God of my understanding. In the first line, I think it's in the 11th step, it gives me the great introduction. It says, the first thing I got to do before I do some meditation and prayer is self examination.