Paul O. from Laguna Niguel, CA speaking in San Diego, CA

Good evening. My name is Paul, and I am a full blown alcoholic, And I am very glad to be here, and I'm very glad that you're here. Sure would be a big empty room without you. And I'm, this is an impressive sight. I, I'm very impressed with being here.

And I I love the candlelight meeting. Reminds me of, my first home groups that particularly Saturday night Canyon Club in Laguna Beach. We used to drive down to Laguna Beach from New Jersey, Anaheim. Drove to Laguna Beach so I wouldn't run into anybody I knew. Continued to go there until I had eventually run into everybody that goes to Laguna Beach so they won't run into anybody they know.

And we love the candlelight meetings, because it helped protect my anonymity, and which was very important to me. I'm very impressed with being asked to be, speaker here tonight. It's just one of my favorite round up And I I am impressed to be here, and I I wanna thank Margaret and the committee for asking asking Max and I both. Max talked at noon today and gave her perverted version of my story, Which she likes to call the the sober version. Max admits though that the Al Anon is often sicker than the alcoholic, and I like to agree with everything Max said.

In fact, I, you know, I was so happy to be invited to this meeting that I when I was in I was an out of state speaker when I was invited living up in red, Redmond, Washington. I was so anxious to speak here that we moved down as close as we could get. Now we're down in Laguna Niguel where we've wanted to live in that area for ever since I got sober because we got sober in that area. And we've been moving around about the last 5 years. I think we moved 4 or 5 times.

And people often ask me, how come you're moving so much? I said, hell, I don't know. I said, I took the 3rd step and completely lost control of my life. But I found out what happened is we've been moving around so I could we could live close to where I was working, and working was interfering with my program and so I gave up work. So we're not gonna move anymore.

We're staying right where we are. We love it. I just love being back in the southern part of Southern California. I think that's just terrific. And I love the the AA here and, glad to be home.

I, speaking of the Al Anon side, I'm used to be at a meeting. We didn't see it up in Washington. The meetings were up there. They didn't have a show of hands. I I like show of hands.

Could we see the hands of all the alcoholics? Could you raise your hands, please? That's terrific. Let's give us a hand. Yeah.

That's good. We definitely have a quorum. What about the alanones? I know there's some alanones here. I can feel the vibrations.

So can we see the hands of the alanones? You're the ones with the blue badges, in case you don't know who you are. That's enough. That's enough. Al Anon's are easily addicted to compliments.

Don't laugh. Don't laugh. You should never laugh at the Al Anon's. No, you shouldn't. The book speaks very kindly of El Nocs.

It says, they're not at fault. They seem to have been born that way. You shouldn't laugh at them, big guy. I understand there are a few of you people that have a little trouble making this program anyway and trying to stay sober on just meetings in the first couple of steps and you might want to look into that Al Anon program. It might be worth you looking into it.

They've got our whole program. They've got the steps and traditions and they've got the whole thing. They got a whole program and they can drink too. Might be just what some of you are looking for. How about newcomers, they're going to add a round up.

You have a show of hands for the newcomers? 30 days or less since your last drink, would you raise your hands, please? That's great. That's great. We're glad you're here.

I hope you keep coming back. You might as well. You just ruined your reputation. This is as bad as it gets. There's only one time when it's this bad, and That's when it gets this bad again, and that's when you've been around AEA for a while, been sober a while, you're getting to be almost an expert and find yourself all screwed up and, get to talking to somebody and you they point out to you that the reason you're screwed up is because you're living with another alcoholic, and they tell you to go to Al Anon.

Yeah. Then you can really get insulted. I think they suggest that to you. The, but we're glad you're here. I speaking here tonight, I realized, it's not a con of considerable concern to me that I, a number of you people haven't heard me talk before, but an awful lot of you have heard me talk before.

This is an important enough occasion to call for an entirely new talk, a new story. That's a big problem, you know. I I thought of that. I thought about that a lot. But, these stories have a high high price tag.

Wasn't wasn't sure I'd be back by Easter. I didn't know what to do about that. I gave a lot of thought, I even got worrying about it. I love to worry. I love to worry.

In fact, I firmly believe in the positive power of worry. You worry enough about something you can hold it back. It can keep it from happening. It doesn't always work, but even if it doesn't work, at least you know by God you gave it your best shot. You didn't just sit there and do nothing and let it happen, you know, you weren't passive about it.

You're worried real good about it. And, I like to worry and I like to be depressed. I always love being depressed. I used to, when I get depressed, I like to go to bed, pull the covers over my head, lay there and suck my thumb and feel sorry for myself. One day I didn't realize it's very depressing to act depressed.

And, I I turned my, concern about this over. I with the book today on page 86 something by you, relax and take take it easy. Don't worry. Let go. Let God pray for an intuitive thought or decision or an inspiration.

And, nothing happened. Finally, today I got the answer and says, yeah, that's right. It is a problem. It's a big problem, but, but it's not your problem. And, so I came to realize that I better if I put my efforts into keeping me comfortable than trying to make you comfortable.

So if there's a problem about hearing the story, it's your problem, not mine. I love to I love to gather up people's problems. I've done that most of my life. Now I come up with a problem and think, oh, that's a terrific one. Can I have that?

And so, yeah, you can have it. They go off happy and they want the hell am I gonna do with this problem, you know. And I find I don't have to do that so much anymore. I can say that's an interesting problem you got there. You just keep that and I'll do what I can to help you with it, but you keep it.

I, it's it's a new thing I've learned on the program. So So if this problem matures and I know that the new people, will be hearing me the first time and the people that heard me before, I know will get a tremendous lesson in patience and tolerance. So from there, we'll go on from there. I said it was an alcoholic and I don't even know what an alcoholic is for everything. I was talking about how I, used to go to the Canyon Club on Saturday night.

And I at that time, I wasn't even an alcoholic. I I wouldn't want you to think I'd always been an alcoholic. I, I used to find myself accidentally drunk a lot, but I wasn't one of those dumb alcoholics. In fact, I didn't become an alcoholic until I've been coming to these meetings for 9 months. My aunt and wife says it was 7 months.

It was the end of July of 1967 that I became an alcoholic. Up till then I was not an alcoholic and, at least as I say, I used to find myself accidentally drunk when I was drinking that I wasn't an alcoholic. And after 7 months, I became an alcoholic, and now that I'm an alcoholic, I don't even drink. And when I became an alcoholic, I was a very mild alcoholic, at first. I've become a full blown alcoholic since that time.

But just alcohol alcoholic alcoholics enough to stay here. I don't even know what an alcoholic is for god's sake. I think, Jack came close to it today saying that it had to do with endorphins and iodo isoquinolines and all that fancy brain chemistry. I think there's something wrong in the chemistry in my head. But when I say I'm an alcoholic I mean that I can't drink safely, sanely, sensibly, socially.

I can't drink for the damn, as a matter of fact. And yet I can't not drink. I have a body that doesn't answer it doesn't handle alcohol appropriately. I don't, and I don't have any problems with that, the fact that my body doesn't handle that chemical the way most other people do. 9 out of 10 of the people who drink alcohol react to it one way, they're called social drinkers, 1 out of 10 reacts to it differently and they're called alcoholic.

I react to it differently, what's called an alcoholic. And I've seen that with every drug I've ever studied all my life. That's why drugs are on prescription. That's why I put a doctor together. That's why they're not on the supermarket because they're all dangerous.

You know, everybody acts to the drugs the same except for the people that act to them differently. Just like aspirin, anybody can take aspirin except the people that can't. There's the penicillin in shot form and anybody could take penicillin shots except the people who are allergic to it. You get somebody's allergic to a penicillin, a shot of penicillin, give them a shot, turn around, put a kneel down, they dropped the panel and dropped it on the floor behind you. Wow.

He sure is sensitive to that stuff, isn't he? Weak will, son of a gun, isn't he? No guts at all. Can't even take a shot like a man. That's, I didn't have any problems with that.

I react differently to it, and I, I my body reacts differently now. It just means you just don't drink it. I mean, if you, you know, if you if you do the weird and peculiar things when you drink that I do when I drink, you probably decide to not drink it. If you can't drink like a gentleman, don't drink at all. If you can't drink like a lady, leave it alone.

If you can't handle it just don't drink it, you know. You don't have to be very smart to figure that out. I figured that out many a time. My body doesn't handle alcohol well. The best thing to do is don't drink it.

I have a body that doesn't handle alcohol, so I don't drink it. That would be no problem except I have a brain. I have a brain that insists on drinking. So I have to drink, but I can't drink. And you can't drink, but you have to drink.

That's a dilemma. What that means is that without AA you're screwed. I was screwed for a long time, didn't even know what the problem was. I found out that I used to drink when I first came to AA, I thought that first thing you have to do is figure out why you drank. And I got to thinking about why I drank, and I I saw the reasons why I drank.

Okay. In the daytime, I drank, daytime drinks. At night, I drank nightcap. That's what nightcapster invented for. And when it was hot, I drank when it was hot.

You drink beer when it's hot. I remember going to ball games back in Ohio, and you always take a bottle because it gets cold. So I drink when it's hot, I drink when it's cold. I drink on happy occasions. Go to a wedding, you always drink.

That's why people invite you to their wedding. Come to the wedding and drink. You can't not drink at a wedding. You need to insult it. You have to drink at weddings.

Remember my father's funeral, we drank at his funeral. In fact, I've never been to a funeral or a wake if they didn't have liquor out in the kitchen. You drink it, sad occasions. I used to drink because there's a lot of people around. You have to drink when people are around.

People are insulted if you don't drink with them when they're around. I used to drink when I was alone because I was lonely. I would drink because it was there. I would find go to the refrigerator just check-in and out, see what's in the refrigerator. The bottle is sitting on, here I am on a second shot, you know.

Oh, okay, I'll have a beer, you know. I just drink it because it was there. I'd go out and buy some because there wasn't any there. Never know when somebody's gonna come by. I think the only thing I can do only thing that was consistent about it was that every drink I ever took seemed like a good idea at the time.

May not have seemed like a good idea a short time later, but it seemed like a good idea at the time I drank it. And I I drank on all kinds of occasions. I I remember drinking when I before we go to church dinner dances. And I don't like church dinner dances. There are a lot of people at church dinner dances.

You have to talk to them, and I don't have to talk to people at dinners. Seemed to do alright tonight, but that was I didn't know how to do a dance, and, I didn't know how to dance. I couldn't dance. I don't like to dance, except I would have a few drinks. I remember before going to church dinner dance, I'd have a few drinks.

You have to be very careful not to drink too much while you're there. You have to have 2 drinks while you're there. If you don't drink at all, people will know you have a problem. So you have to drink, but you have to not drink too much. Anybody knows that.

And I would have a few drinks before I went there and 2 drinks while I was there, and it would relax me mentally and physically. Relax me mentally and I could talk to people, relax me physically and I could dance. And a few drinks, relax me, and then I talk, I'll talk, talk, physically I could dance. I, but as time went by, I can recall this is many years ago that to think back to it, but as time went by, the 2 got out of sync. I would, for instance, I would not have even begun to relax mentally yet and I would get too relaxed physically.

And I would have to talk. It would show up in my voice, and I would have to talk very slowly and carefully so nobody would notice. And when I would reach for something to knock it down or I would trip and I would when there was nothing to trip on, I would or I would find myself lying there on floor. My brain would say, get up, you fool. These people will think you're drunk.

And my body would say, what do you mean get up? I'm paralyzed from the ears down. And I lay there and think, isn't that strange? Isn't it strange that I can't move? I don't remember reading about that in medical school.

I must have an idiosyncrasy to alcohol. I'll have to look up look that up someday. Being of scientific then, it didn't help me get sober, but it gave me something to think about, while I was saying, took my mind off a little bit off my full bladder. And that's not a good time to have a full bladder. And then there are times when the opposite would happen and I wouldn't even begun to relax physically yet and I would get too relaxed mentally.

It would be like, as if all my brain cells would get together and say, what the hell, he's drinking anyhow, let's take the night off. And they go on home, and my body would go on doing things. And in the morning, I tried to figure out what my body had been doing when my brain was gone. I used to worry about that until one night I heard Cliff Farrak talk about, he came out he used to worry about what he did in blackouts until he one day realized that he'd never come out of a blackout to find that he had spent the night helping the little sisters of the poor. So I no longer tried to figure out what I was doing when my brain didn't stay on duty to record what was happening at the time.

And there are other times when both mental and physical got what happened was the longer I drank, the harder it was to predict what was gonna happen when I drank. And, my life continued to deteriorate, and I ended up in the, nut ward. I ended up in the nut ward of the hospital. I was on the staff The and I remember being admitted there and they wanted to put me in a, ward because that's part of the therapy that you mixed in with the other cooks and good for you. It seems like they have all kinds of weird ideas there.

Just like they try to convince me that the quality of my life would be improved if I could learn how to make leather belts. That made no sense to me that any my life would be improved in any way by me knowing how to make leather belts. But it is true that after going to these meetings for a little while, I went back to that hospital and I made a beautiful pair of moccasins. I made a pair of moccasins and a half a wallet, And I just love Beymock's. I wish I had brought them.

I wish I wish I could join. You'd be impressed, for the workmanship and that leather was good. They not only fit good but they wore good. They were really good. They were the tongs were out and I'd pair them and we take them.

It took 7 years before they wore out to the point where I couldn't repair them anymore. And for my 7th birthday, my dear Al Anon wife had my moccasins bronze, And I just love my bra and small. They're not nearly as comfortable. Back and make another pair. But, I I didn't like it in an upward.

The only thing they do with you there is they give you a lot of skills, and then they say, now we want you to go outside and play volleyball. And boys are going to play the girls. Here, take the Thorazine. And Thorazine makes light seem brighter and feet seem heavier and hard to get a message from your head to your feet. And, when the girl that hits the ball, Here it comes.

You gotta run, Paul. Oh, here comes that concrete wall, Paul. Volleyball in a concrete block wall court is a painful game. Shouldn't do that. I think about that volleyball going by, remind me of Demerol.

I don't know why it reminded me. I have to be careful about I I only took the alcohol. I used a few pills too, and if you're narcotics, I didn't. But I I just took enough I didn't I never became a pill head. I just took a few medicinal, not habit forming medicinal pills.

No. No. It's true. That's true. I never ever took a pill.

I never ever took a pill except when I had the symptom that only that pill would release. I did. I I either had it or I could feel it coming on. They were very tiny little pills, and I was rather insensitive to pills. I took a few narcotics and I took, as I had mentioned earlier, some some Demerol.

I had I had to be careful when I mentioned Demerol because the other night, I mentioned this in a meeting, and my mind went blank for about 30 seconds. And it it didn't make my nose itch like morphine does. And morphine hard to practice good medicine when you shoot morphine. You have to do anything with one hand scratch your nose to the other. I have a tendency to vomit unexpectedly.

Patients never got used to that. But when you get admitted to the network of the hospital you're on your staff of and your wife kicks you in, you get a private room. She says, do you realize that he's on the staff of this hospital? Now I got a private room. No.

It was it wasn't really private. It was kinda like the room. She was on today and she was talking about the day I had the convulsion, and they took me she took me to the hospital, and I wouldn't stay unless she stayed overnight in the bed next to me in the same room. Here I am, big shot doctor on the staff of this hospital, and I won't stay until mommy has the bed next. I went to that word.

She didn't wanna stay there. As a matter of fact, I got out of that word. I thought, oh, this. I went home. I said, that was pretty nice.

Maybe you'd like to go in for a little while. She was insulted. Actually, I thought I was rather heroic because I knew she was the one that needed it and yet I didn't wanna tell them that. I'd already signed out of the Mayo Clinic and whatever. And they obviously had locked up the wrong person.

I knew she was my problem. Because my wife could drink too, it's my opinion. And, she knew I was her problem. We were like cross swords. And, the harder I worked on her, the sicker she got.

The harder she worked on me, the sicker I got. And I worked, I mean, I did all kinds of things. I thought, I thought hypnosis might help her. Hypnotherapy they called it. I took a course in hypnosis, turned out she wasn't a very good hypnotic subject.

I didn't give up. I ended I I took 6 different courses in hypnosis trying to hypnotize. I ended up a drunken hypnotist. Saying hypnotherapy reminded me of the time before I became an alcoholic and I was looking for answers, there was something in some of the medical journals about carbon dioxide inhalations being good treatment for emotional problems, psychoneurosis. And, the more I read about the more I thought that sounds good.

That sounds like what you if you breathe carbon dioxide, the more you breathe of it, the deeper you breathe. And you keep getting it in your blood till you finally pass out. I thought, I could do that. So I got the old Facebook and I found a place where they sell oxygen by the tank and then they also sold I called and I said they sold carbon dioxide by the tank. Send me a tank.

Brought it to the house, great big tank of carbon dioxide, big thing, but I took big around, brought it in on a cart, set it in the bedroom, of course, with hoses and a mask on it. And every night I'd go in, I'd go in the living room and say to Max, I'm going in and take my treatment. You come in later and take the mask off. I go in, lie on the bed, cross my arm, put the mask on my face, turn the thing on, and breathe deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, pass out. And later on she'd wander in and say, oh, you know, take the mask off, you know.

It didn't work on my stage and didn't didn't get me sober, but I I was willing to go to any lengths, I'll tell you. I wanted to get well, and I was willing to do just anything at all. Like so many people who talk to me, I'm willing to do anything. I said, what about quitting drinking? Well, no.

They're not ready to do that. What how about going to 8? Well, no. What else you got? You know what I mean?

But, I was trying hard. And I was at AA. The Really I was trying to control everything, everything, everybody, all aspects of my life. See, I was totally in charge of my life, totally in charge. They, and when you're in charge, you get credit for everything good that's happened, but you also have to take the blame for everything bad unless you blame it on somebody like Matt.

If there's somebody I can blame it on. And, I used to spend my time in the network thinking of the things that have gone wrong that a nice guy like me ended up in a place like that. And I remember one day I was sitting there, thinking of all the things that had gone wrong when this dumb psychiatrist who couldn't see it, Max says my problem, walked up behind me and says, how would I like to talk to a man from AA? And I thought, god almighty. Don't I have enough problems of my own without trying to help some drunk from AA?

I was spending my time sitting there writing letters and orders and directions and things for my actions to do to try to keep the world running while I was locked up in the nut work, and that alone was enough of a job. And I think, of course, today I realized that's kinda crazy for me to do that from the network. But, of course, it's not as crazy as you're coming back every day for a new list like you did. Now I ended up going to some meetings just to please this dumb psychiatrist. I don't know if you I'm sure none of you have ever been in a nut word, but happy yourself.

Happiness on an upward is having a happy psychiatrist. And I agreed to go and we went and got to some of these meetings and I heard some dumb things. I remember a guy stood up there and said, big husky, big husky healthy guy. He says, for me to drink is to die. And I thought, oh my god.

How corny can you get? It's trying to frighten. Here I was I had pancreatitis once. I had convulsions twice. I thought I was dying from a brain tumor.

I was gonna pass from the nut work. I thought you were trying to frighten me in joining this organization. And I remember the day I heard a guy say, if I don't drink today, I'm a success today. And I was ashamed for him. What kind of life would that be that you could brag about the fact that you had no drink today and had a beer today.

And and the people in the UK seem like such fanatics. Really fanatics. Even beer and light wine for god's sake. That's what I drank when I quit drinking. And their own lingo and everything else.

But there were 2 things that were said after several months that really and they said close together and I think they had a tremendous impact and the fact that they were said close together I think was very important. One of them was McGahn said, I'd rather be an AA by mistake than out there by mistake. I'd rather be an AA by mistake than out there by mistake, And that has been an has influenced me ever since. To this day, I love to hear drumcalongs. I'm fascinated by what are the this disease does to nice people like us.

Both us with the allergy and the compulsion and those who live with us who have it. It's fascinating, fascinating what alcohol fever and kwashiorkor. I don't even care if I ever see anymore, you know. And none as fascinating as alcoholism. And nothing's more fascinating in this disease than the recoveries.

Fascinating recoveries. I just love to watch people come in and get well and play any kind of a part in somebody else's recovery from this disease. It's a really fast most fascinating disease, fascinating recovery I've ever seen. And I love it. Just love it.

And I what was the other thing that, better be an AA by mistake? Oh, yeah, thank you. Yeah. She's heard this story as often as I have. Yeah.

She comes with me. We go get these things all the time together. And as a matter of fact, I'm very indebted to Max. Very, very, very, very, very indebted to Max for her my finance is choking me up a bit. For her enthusiasm for the program because there was a time early in the early days before I became an alcoholic when I would punish her for not acting right by refusing to go to meeting, knowing that she couldn't drive all the way to Laguna by herself.

And she got in the car and drove to Laguna Beach all by her self repeatedly. And so I decided to go to hell with that, then I usually start going back. And I think and many time, I'll just say, oh, no. I don't wanna do that. And she'll say, oh, come on.

Let's go to the meeting. That person would be happy to have us there to see hear him speak or something like that. And, I'm very appreciative of Max's interest in the program. It's every alcoholic should have an enthusiastic alanine in their life. The, but anyway, what the person said was that, they said they were speaking of themselves, and they said I was judging me by my intentions and the world was judging me by my actions.

And I was I was just very, very sorry they said that. But I'm really one of the best intention people you'll ever meet. They just don't come much better intentions than I am. In all humility, I will tell you that. But when I set all my intentions aside and just looked at my actions, It was a very painful thing.

I was a drunken father, drunken husband, drunken neighbor, drunken drunken doctor for god's sake. It's never intended. It just amazes me how easy it is to not drink, take pills, shoot drugs. And I, of course, I stay very active, but it's very easy to not do this. Not drinking is no problem for me.

On the other hand, not thinking tends to be a problem. Any problem I have today is a thinking problem. If I think it's a problem, it's a problem. Whether you think it's a problem or not, it's a problem. In fact, if I think it's a big problem, it's a big problem.

I and that's the nice part about it. I decide the size of my problem. I didn't know that. Everybody else used to decide it for me. The authorities and the press and politicians would tell me how big my problems were.

And today, I realized I decide whether or not my problems are. How big they are and whether or not they are problems. And I, I have never thought I had a problem and been wrong. You want me to wait for you? I'll wait.

If it seems like a problem to me, it is. And in fact, I haven't done it recently, but I used to read the 20 questions to substitute thinking for drinking. I'd like to do that tonight if I have the 20 questions with me. I think it might be good for the, Alanon. I heard Gene say this morning that an Elanon thinking might be worse than an alcoholic drinking.

But if you take the 20 questions and substitute thinking for drinking, you get questions like do you lose time from work due to your thinking? Or really dumb questions like, is your thinking making your home life unhappy? Do you think because you are shy with other people? Is your thinking affecting your reputation? Have you ever gone into financial difficulty as Do you crave or think at a definite time daily?

Do you want to think the next morning? Is thinking causing you to have difficulty in sleeping? A night my body won't lie down and go to sleep, my right brain would say, no, no, let's sit here and talk about it for a while. Even though I say, hey, wake up, we want to talk to you. You know that thing you thought you handled so well today?

Wasn't like that at all. It really ticked off at you, and you did the same thing last year, and the year before that. In fact, you don't wanna do your 4th step. Let's go here and do this the rest of the night. We'll take your inventory for you.

Ask your questions that have no answers. Is your thinking jeopardizing your job or business? Do you think to escape from worries or trouble? Do you think alone? The has your physician ever treated you or have you ever been in a hospital or institution on account of your thinking?

The one I like best is the one that says, have you ever had a complete loss of memory as a result of thinking? I I shouldn't have really said my name is Paul, I'm an alcoholic. I should have said my name is Paul, and we are alcoholics. My, my head is a very busy place. As I've often said, it's people say that anything run by a committee isn't very well run.

My life has been run by a committee with no chairman. It's more like a, like I said earlier, like a crowded Greyhound tourist bus with no driver. And one of the passengers would get up and drive a while, you know, and they'd sit down and somebody else would drive a while. We wonder why we never got there. Very busy place and all talking.

And I have personalities I haven't even used yet. And they, and they all talk. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. I don't know how you think, but I think by people talking. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.

Day and night. Talk, talk, talk. I got a radio talk show and sometimes drift over and pick up another one. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. All the time to all these personalities and, one of them doesn't like Max.

It's always pointing out things that she said, did you hear what she just said? And so what kind of a man would put up with a woman talking about them like that? And there's another one up there I think she's absolutely fantastic. I think she's beautiful and charming and great sense of humor, wonderful person. All these conflicting things.

There's one in my head that's afraid. All time afraid, don't do that, don't do that. You'll make a fool of yourself and they'll laugh at you. There's one that says as long as you're sober buddy, you can do anything. You can do just anything.

There's just nothing you can't do. There's different personalities. Each one has their own pathway of doing it. There's one up there no matter what happens, his answer is always the same. Let's have a drink.

Every time he said that, we all marched off and had a drink. Today I found out I don't have to do everything that that's suggested. Those are those are not orders. I thought they were, but they're just suggestions. It's like I got an aid meeting.

Anybody can say anything they want. Say, well, thank you for participating. Now if you'll sit down, we'll call on somebody else, and then we'll all decide what to do. We have a consensus. I used to drown them out.

The only way I could handle them was to use drugs, chemicals, alcohol, pills, silence, and put them all to sleep so I could go to sleep. I didn't have a drinking problem. I had a sleeping problem. I was born with congenital insomnia And I had to get to sleep. I had important things to do and it was necessary that I sleep.

And I had to drink, and I find that I can't do that for a variety of reasons. Every every time I use a drug or chemical of any sort, it created a need for still another chemical. There's always a side effect. It always worked. Every chemical always worked, but then it always worked for a shorter and shorter period of time.

And it took more and more to do it. So I had to take more of it, take it more often, and I had to take something new to counteract that. And every time I used the drug to solve a problem, it made me more dependent folks to solve a problem. But every time I use AA and the AA program to solve a problem, I become more dependent on AA. Every time I use spiritual values, which is the same thing, I become more dependent on spiritual value.

So I'm not less dependent. I'm more dependent, but there are spiritual values on this program. I came to this program and looked for an answer eventually for how to take care of a drinking problem, and I found an answer that fits every problem I've ever had. And I've become aware of the fact that, one of the worst things I can do with a problem is what I used to do to work on it. I don't even have to work on it, all I have to do is think about it.

I just have a powerful mind that puts energy into whatever I think about, good or bad. And if I put if I think about my problem, all I do is watch it grow. I just make any problem and I can make it bigger. I can think I can take a non problem. I know.

Well, that's no problem. Anybody could see that. But if you if you think about it a minute, it could be. You know? And first, I think, well, you know, it is kind of a problem.

I look at it. It it is a bit and pretty soon I'm thinking, my god. It's a good thing I'm looking at this problem. It really is. I'm the only one that's noticing that it's a problem, you know.

And pretty soon I'm thinking, my god. What am I gonna do with this god darn problem? And people aren't able to help you with a problem like that very much. I mean, I haven't been able to find help. Even my sponsor, terrific guy, Jack.

Jack Kim in LA. Great guy. But he has this dumb expression. He says, well, whatever. What are you gonna do with a a well, whatever, when you've got a great big problem?

I remember one time I was, I used to I used to think, you know, my my, good intentions. I was always planning to do much more with my life than I had done, and I would have done it if it hadn't been for circumstances, like the wrong parents, going to the wrong town, the wrong time. My father was a pharmacist instead of a doctor, and I married Max, and Max did all these things. And, I used to call Jack up and tell him all these reasons why I wasn't doing more with my life than I was. I thought he needed to know that, and he used to listen to this.

But one day, I called him up to tell him this something that Max had done that was real awful that I can't remember at the moment. And, and before I could even get get started, he interrupted me and he said something about, well, why don't you just why don't you just put out of your mind a couple of days and see what happens? And I said, okay. Yeah. I said, yeah.

A couple of days, I'll forget all about it. And I can't, and I can't use drugs to silence the voices in my head. And one of the main reasons too is that that's where I hear where god speaks to me. God speaks to me as one of the voices in my head, and I have to listen to all of them to tell which one he is. God comes to me in spiritual ideas or ideas of love or how to help a newcomer, how to help somebody on the program.

How to help somebody needs to join the program, how to help somebody not on the program. It comes to me with ideas and, both the voices in my head and the voices in AA. I have to listen to AA because that's where I hear god speak, and I I'm never sure when he's speaking and when he isn't. And sometimes I think he's speaking through everybody. And so I have to listen to the tune of that.

I can't stop coming here and I can't turn off the voices in my head. And that's where I hear god. And of all the people in my head, of all the personalities inside me, it's my belief that deep in the very center deep, deep, deep in the very center, there's a center of calm. There's a center of calm in the very center of my being, and that's where god is. As Tom was talking about the first on Friday night, The center of calm and the center of this and if if that's where god is, and I think I think that's where he is.

If that's where he is in me, then that's where he is in you. That's where he is in all of us. I've often heard it said that we are all equal, and yet we obviously aren't equal in many, many things. But yet I wonder if that isn't where our equality is, that God is in the center of each of us, and we each have the same spiritual potential. I wonder if that isn't true.

I I choose to think it is. I remember one day hearing Chuck C talk and he was talking about his higher power in this and his higher power did that. And all the time, his higher power doing all these wonderful things. And after he is through, when I talked to him later in the day and I said, you know, you're all time bragging about your higher power and I just bet you a nickel and I'll make it a quarter. I'll make it a quarter in a fair fight My higher power could lick your higher power.

I just wonder if we couldn't all have the same equality. I, it's interesting to think in terms of we are each one of us is unique. No 2 of us are the same. No 2 of us are the same. Like snowflakes in there.

No 2 living things are exactly the same. God has gone to a lot of trouble to make us unique, which means that if any one of us was missing, the universe wouldn't be complete. God went to a lot of trouble to create us unique and yet with all that same spiritual potential. I think of God as the the the bible tells us he went to he created all this in, what was it, 8 days and on the 7th day he rested. The 6 days make it.