The Northern Plains Group of Alcoholics Anonymous in Fargo, ND

Pipe down. Paul Martin's an alcoholic. Hi. Paul. And I have not taken a drink, as a result as a result of a god that will never forgive me, sponsorship that should not be trusted, and a program of action that will never work since May 5, 2001.

Yeah. It's very distracting. I want to thank Matt for asking me to speak. It is always an honor and a privilege to speak in Alcoholics Anonymous or anywhere really at all. There's a long time people were asking me to stop doing that.

So, although, really, my head tells me about damn time. I, I'm grateful to be here. I'm grateful to be an alcoholic. I'm grateful to be a part of this group. You guys rock.

I've never been anywhere where there was more enthusiasm for what the hell is wrong with me than here. I, I'm not gonna go into a long, long drunkalogue about where I was, what I did. But to qualify myself, I love getting loaded. And you know what? AA has no opinion on outside issues.

Hence, the AA may not never be drawn into public controversy, but I love smoking pot too. My idea of a good time is dropping 3 hits of acid and trying to figure out a Rubik's cube and a strobe light. Get it on. Problem is is that both of those things tend to, tend to cause problems. I mean, the first time when I started getting loaded, I was just all pothead.

I was not gonna be a drunk like my mom because my mom's an alcoholic, and I had a very low opinion of her at the time. So I was just not gonna drink. I was going to, you know, smoke smoke pot because you can quit that. It's not physically addictive, and I'll be just fine. I just, you know, just be cool and hang with the cool guys.

And wasn't too long after that, I was running the streets of Spokane. I was dealing drugs on the street. I was drinking. I was dealing acid. I was doing everything you could do to stay alive and loaded on the streets.

A series of events occurred. I left state, with a number of people hot on my trail. Many of them not very pleased with me, and went out to Wisconsin to get a new start. You know, and everywhere I went, I got thrown out of every place I was. I went to Wisconsin.

I got tossed out of my mom's house. I had to leave my grandma's house. I was staying with friends here and there. They all asked me to leave. I wound up going to a was at one point, I was in a mission in Madison, Wisconsin, and after 2 months of me not getting a job or doing anything to improve myself, they asked me to leave.

I don't know how many people went thrown out of a mission, but that's really rough on your self esteem. So, you know, honestly, the first time I drank, I never was gonna be an alcoholic. The first time I drank, I was on the run from a boys' ranch. Me and Mike had not eaten or, you know, had any kind of meal or a decent place to sleep in, like, 2 days. We weren't going to go back to Morningstar Boys Ranch, and we hooked up with a couple of guys driving around Spokane in a car and or there was there was at least 1 guy, and there was, like, 3 girls.

And then, I was kinda the odd man out. We went over to this one guy's house, broke into the basement, and he stole a big, big gallon of vodka from his parents' house down in the basement somewhere. I don't know. It was a gallon jug or something. And, went over to the basement of somebody else's house and we were gonna have a party.

And they handed me this big old Slurpee cup, 1 in 32 ounce jobs. And, they're like, you wanna make your own drink or you want us to mix one for you? I wanna look stupid, so I'm thinking I'll I'll mix my own. And they handed me the jug and I filled that thing almost all the way up with vodka. And they're going, do you want a little bit of orange juice with that?

Why? They're like, well, for flavor or something. So I splash a little bit in there, mix it around, and took a sip. Couldn't breathe, and I thought, well, I did with children. Do I plug my nose?

And just hammered that thing down. Sat there trying to breathe for a minute. I got vapors coming out of my eyes. I'm just like, oh. You know?

That's I never drank like that before at all. And, everybody's going, dude, you're cool, man. You really know how to drink. Do you want another one? And I don't think I had an alcoholic moment there.

I think I had a stupid moment there. I'm like, yeah. I made myself another one, hammered that down. In 15 minutes, I think I downed about a 5th a gallon of vodka on an empty stomach. I'd been on the run.

My system was already on crash and burn. I have brief recollections of periods of time through that night vomiting, yellow, vomiting clear, vomiting nothing, vomiting some black stuff they told me later was blood. I recall later on in the night, I was laying on the floor of this basement because it was nice and cool. And thinking, god, I don't wanna have to call it a bathroom again. Jesus.

And I look over and I see this. It was a it was a grill, like a sewer grill laying right on the floor in the middle of this, basement. Perfect. And I just kinda crawled over that and lay next to it and puked in that all night long. I woke up in the morning, and it was actually the grill from an outdoor cooker laying on the concrete floor.

And I had this stream of vomit all the way down the side. Oh, man. So I swear I was never ever gonna drink again. Alcohol is crap. I mean, this is terrible.

Why am I doing this? You know, I'm never gonna do this again. Guess who's speaking at an AA meeting tonight? That really, you know, that was a bad beginning for me. And, most people would never ever do that again.

But what happened is is I gotta stay loaded. I can't deal with life. I've come to find out that what I have is I don't have mean, I can drink pretty good. I can do a lot of other stuff pretty good too. I can handle the heat.

But what happens is, is when I get sober, I discover that I cannot deal with life on life's terms. I cannot deal with you people. I cannot look you in the eye. I have no self confidence. I have no tools for living.

I have no way to get through the day dealing with my job and the pressure and the stress and the kids and the wife and those retards in traffic. You know? Nothing is. I can't deal with it. You know?

To this day, my sponsor still thinks I should avoid things like firearms, stun guns, and dynamite. I get a little edgy. So a lot of running. To make a long story short, I wound up in North Dakota running with a carnival. Shortly after that, I wound up married.

You want me to connect the dots on that? We'll do that when I have more time. Got married, had kids, started getting loaded again. You know, I'd quit for a little while and then, discovered that, you know, a relative of hers was a stoner and that I could buy booze once I turned 21. It was a lot easier to get.

And, you know, so I was drinking. I was getting loaded, and, I was just I wasn't gonna do any of them powders. You know, if I had if I was doing powders, I had a problem. Never mind. I've been dealing drugs out of the closet in my house with a wife and kids and a decent job.

If I if I'm doing powders, I got a problem. So I wouldn't do any of that. You know? You gotta have the boundaries. So eventually I wanted to get in popped.

I mean, people tend to notice when you run around drugs, you know, do any illegal stuff. And, what happened for me is I got arrested. They only caught me with a little bit, but it scared me enough knowing that what I had at home was a considerably larger amount than what they caught me with. I got rid of that, and I just backed out of that scene. Given a good enough reason, I quit doing that.

Given a good enough reason, I quit smoking, but I did a little bit here and there. But what I did is I turned to the solution to all my problems in Mickey's Fine Mall Liquor Brew. You know? And I had a 40 of Mickey's every day. And after a while, I started thinking, well, I can handle 2 of those, and I'd have 2 240's of Mickey's Fine Mall Liquor Brew.

And then it'd be an exceptionally good day or an exceptionally bad day. A little one of them little doddles of, you know, Jose Cuervo, who is my very best friend. Pretty soon you get the bigger bottle, and then I start doing the math and thinking how much money I could save. And I got a case of beer in the fridge, and I got a big old half gallon or a 5th of Jose, depending on what I can afford, in the freezer, every 2 days pretty soon. I was doing that every 2 days.

And, what I did is I stayed loaded on almost a daily basis for a very long time. I didn't drink at work except for some Saturdays in there. I didn't really just discuss, but, I wound up drinking on a regular basis, and it was a couple of years into that that my wife and I wound up getting a divorce. I discovered some things I won't go into from the podium, but, it was enough to where I decided I can't do this anymore. And we wanna get it separated, the process of a divorce, but we were just separated.

And for the 1st 3 months, I was insane. I was drinking more than I normally drank. I was doing things I normally wouldn't do. I was hanging out with people I normally wouldn't hang out with, driving out of town drunk 60 miles, driving back into town drunk 60 miles. I, one night, I woke up doing 70 miles an hour in the ditch on cruise control between the two sides of I 94 because my car had landed from jumping one of the little access roads the cops used to turn around and chase you.

I woke up to just boom, and I opened my eyes, and there's grass and water and stuff flying over my hood. It took me about a 16th of a second to realize this is not a dream. Florid peeled out up onto the road, and the first thing I thought was, I wonder if anybody saw that. You know, I'm looking around. Nothing to do with drinking.

It really I I I looked at the place where I went off the road since then. And if I had done it about a mile or 2 before that, I would hit the underside of a bridge. And if I had done it a mile or 2 after that, I would have dropped down between 2 bridges. You know? If you don't believe that there's something out there looking out for drunks and idiots, there is.

I should not be alive. You know? The places I've been, the things I've done, the people I've done, the places I've been, there's no reason a guy like me should be alive. You know? And I want her to I want her to speak or say that, you know, all my life, I'd I'd said, why me?

Why me? Why me? You know, I always felt like the estranged one. I always felt like the different one. I always felt like everybody's picking on me.

Everybody's out to get me. Anybody felt like anybody's out to get them. I know that. And I always felt that way. And, what what the speaker said is the last time I said that is about couple couple of minutes before I got up here to speak.

Why me? Why do I get to be sober? Why do I get to be the one that gets to be here and be a part of this? Why do I get to be the one that gets another chance at life? You know?

Guys like me don't live through this. And, to the best of my understanding, the answer is that my work is not done and your guys' work is not done. There's a reason we're here. So I came wandering into Alcoholics Anonymous entirely by accident. May 4th of 2 accident.

We call that God's way of staying anonymous. But what happened for me is the night before, this girl I had met, her everybody's got her or him depending on, you know, whatever. She and I had gotten into a fight. Some stuff had come up, and I had flipped out. And I don't know you, but I tend to drink and overreact.

I wound up flipping out. I roughed up her. I roughed up my house. I broke some stuff. I wound up taking this really nice crystal chest board of mine and beating it senseless with a hammer to prove to her how much pain I was in.

And, made my point. She left. And, in the process, I had cut my finger open on a piece of, this crystal chessboard had cut me in. And I didn't remember this till I was 2 years sober. But I wandered around the house and I bled on the carpet and a few other things.

And, you know, she had said something about before she left and I wrapped it up. And I was looking around. I see bloodstains on, you know, and I I I wound up calling my mom that night and talking to her an extended period of time. My mom is sober, by the way, and she's been sober for quite some idea. About 14, 15 years now.

And I had called her up because I, you know, I know I'm a drunk. And I've become the person that I swore I would never be. I've roughed up a woman. I've I cannot stop drinking. You know, my life is completely falling apart, and I don't know what to do, and I don't know where to go, and there's no solution to a problem of my type, you know?

And, the And, the reason I found out, I thought later, I figured it out that the excuse that I had given myself to call my mom at that late hour of a night was that she had used to work in a dry cleaner. She knew about cleaning stuff, and I called my mom to ask her how to get the bloodstains out of the carpet. You know? I remember that. I was, like, 2 years sober and that just fired finally in my head and I started crying.

Jesus, you know? I mean, where's a guy at when that's where you where you are, you know? The book talks about pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. It talks about that point where you get the jumping off point where you can't imagine life with alcohol or without it. Talk, you know, it's the end.

I can't drink, I can't not drink, I can't live, I can't die. What what do I do? Where do I go? There is no solution to a problem of my type, and what happened is the next day she came home and she told me all these things that I needed to change. I knew dang well it was her fault.

And, but I politely and I think very generously told her, okay, sure, we'll try and do this and this and this. And she said, by the way, I'm going to a dance tonight with another guy. It's an AA dance. You can go if you want to. And I'm thinking, oh, God, you know, AA and a dance?

And I don't dance. I don't, you know, I won't. Because if I get up there, I'm gonna look like an idiot and you're gonna see that I feel like an idiot. You're gonna open me up, expose me to everyone. Everyone's gonna turn, laugh, and point the earth.

It's gonna swallow up and eat me, you know? And I'm gonna expose me to everyone. Everyone's gonna turn, laugh, and point the earth. It's gonna swallow up and eat me. You know?

That's how I get. I get a little nervous. I don't wanna go to a stupid dance. I don't wanna deal with these AA Nazis. You know?

I know that Jesus. I've seen some AA before. So, you know, the AA I saw was just a bunch of old men sitting around, chain smoking cigarettes, sucking down coffee, holding hands, chanting their little prayers. You know? That's not gonna help a problem like me.

I need serious help. You know? Probably psychiatric help maybe for life. Very strong regiment of a whole lot of stuff. And, I came wandering into Alcoholics Anonymous expecting nothing.

And it wasn't a dance, it was a bloody roundup. There's 300 of you yoyos running around in suits and ties and dresses and everybody's all happy and smiling and, you know, first thing as it happens a lot. The first thing that happened is this joker comes dancing across the room with his hand out, Hi, I'm Kane, is this your first meeting? Oh, jeez. Look at this.

You know? Here we go. And I I didn't want him to think I was here for the meeting or nothing. I'm just here to, you know, I'm with her, and I just don't you know, I just wanna certain things. So I just said, yeah.

And he said, great. Let me find you a seat. He took me over to this guy, Jeff, and he says, Jeff, this is Paul. It says, first meeting, can you sit by him? And Jeff says, no.

No. No. No. I'm doing a I'm doing a sobriety countdown. I want you to have him sit way up there.

You know? I didn't know it was a setup, but I'm sitting in the 3rd row now, and I'm surrounded by people on both side like they're not gonna let me out. And I'm thinking, jeez, I was drinking this morning. I had, like, 3, 4 beers that morning. And, this guy, Jeff, gets up to the podium, and everybody said this hello.

Hi, Jeff. And I'm thinking, what the hell was that? You know? Woah. He says, you know, he says, he's gonna do this sobriety countdown.

He's gonna start it, I believe it was 30 years. And whoever has 30 years, stand up, and then he's gonna count down. Whoever has the least amount of sobriety in the room gets a free copy of the big book. I'm thinking, oh, shit. Great.

You know? I know that he knows it's I'm new. This Cain guy knows I'm new. She's sitting next to me. She knows.

The Keith guy in the back of the room, he knows. I'm doomed. You know? And I'm waiting for him to expose me because they're gonna they're gonna gonna stand out, and they're gonna say this guy was still drinking today. Get him out of here.

We want solar people in AA. That's it. I didn't know why we have meetings. I didn't know that the only reason that we have these meetings, Bill says that we still meet frequently so that a newcomer may find the message they seek. Why we meet is so someone else gets to stay sober, not so I do.

Hear it, to get it, to understand that they're not alone in this world, you know? And I came in that room and they counted down and then he gets down to 7 days and I'm thinking, oh, Jesus. And I look, and he's looking at me. I'm like, 6 days, look around, and I still haven't stood up. And he's looking at me.

I'm like, crap. He gets down to 2 days, and I still haven't stood up. And I was waiting for him to say who has one day of sobriety, and I knew I wouldn't be able to stand up because I don't. And, what he said saved my life, he said, is there anyone in the room who's in their 1st day of sobriety? And I didn't want I don't know why I stood up, but I did.

I stood up, and I was expecting the AA police to chuck me out the door because we don't want people like you around here. You know, we don't drink around. You have to get out. What happened is 300 people came out of their seats and they gave me a standing ovation. I turned around and seen people grinning.

I seen a couple people, a little shiny in the eye, and I looked at maybe out of tears or something. You guys were glad I was there. And I had been a long time since anybody been glad I was anywhere. So I went up, got the book, went into a complete state of shock for the next 12 hours, sat down with my book and this lady got up to share her experience, strength, and hope for the podium. It's a lady named Nancy M.

And, and I had nothing in common with Nancy. I mean, she's female. I'm not. She's older than me. Lives in another part of town.

Different story, different life, different everything. And she stood up there and she told me about the secret fears I have. She told me about the secret anxiety that I have everywhere I go. The bigger the crowd, the more alone I feel. You know?

She told me all of these things I had going on in me. She talked about the way I was hiding my drinking. You know? Not word for word, my story. But the the thing she said reminded me that I would lock myself in the bathroom with a couple of drinks, and I'd be smoking cigarettes and drinking and smoking and drinking.

Just trying to make the room smaller so I could just disappear and my kids would be banging on the door. Hey dad, hey dad. And I say just a minute, I'm smoking. I remember putting coffee in a coffee mug, drinking it, and putting beer in the coffee mug and telling my kids I'm just drinking coffee. You know?

Little stuff. Little stuff like that. But when I look back on it, I've been lying and cheating and stealing and doing all kinds of stuff for a long, long time. You guys knew what was going on. You guys knew how I felt.

You guys knew what it was like to drink the way I drink, feel the way I feel, think the way I think. You knew what was going on in here, and you guys were sober, and you seem to be doing fairly well. You seem to have this light on in your eyes that I had not had in a long, long time. I've been walking around with tombstones in my eyes for years, And, you guys seem to have a solution. I knew it wasn't gonna work, but I thought, screw it.

I've tried everything else. What's the point? You know? I'd already checked myself into the nut ward, planning on going in there in, like, 3 days. And, because I I was going off the deep end.

There's no way I'm gonna make it. And, that night, after the talk, I wanna talk to this guy, Kane, and I'm like, yeah. You know? It's so high. And he's like, hey.

What do you think of that? And he's just grinning. And, I said, well, I think it's pretty cool. You know? It sounds cool.

I think I'm gonna give this a try. And he says, cool. And I'm like, but what's this deal with the sponsor? Between the meeting and him, I'd had, like, 38 people come up to me. Hey.

How are you doing? You got a sponsor? Hey. How are you doing? You need a sponsor.

Hey. How are you doing? Get off of me. You know? And, I I finally hit you know, I I said, I don't know what to do, though.

I said, you know, what's the sponsor deal? What do I do? How do I get a sponsor? Who's the sponsor? Who's from town?

I don't know. This is you know, it's odd bunch out of town people, and he says, I'll be your sponsor. Oh, crap. Not like that. You know?

Fine. You know? I said, what do I do? He said, well, you it's just three things. He says, make it to at least 3 meetings a week.

Make my home group your home group. Fine. I can do that. I can always back out if I have to. What else?

And he says, we meet once a week, and we go through the book, and I show you how to work the steps. Okay. And I was waiting for the hat to drop on the third one because he was gonna say, you can't drink if you're in a a. But what he said once again saved my life, he said, Call me before you drink. Well, I can do that.

And I will be calling you a lot because I drink a lot, man. And, I called him on a nearly daily basis for, for my 1st year, month, and 11 days of sobriety. There was a few times in there I didn't call him, when I was doing things I did not want to talk to him about. He took me through the steps. He taught me about alcoholism.

He showed me that, you know, for me, there's 2 very deciding factors for me. You know? I mean, we talk about drugs. You know, how many people are potheads? Hands?

Yeah. There's a few out there. How many people have realized too late you took too much acid? That is a couple. How many people in here thought, I need to quit drinking, and found that you can't quit drinking?

See, that's what I get here. I get identification. You guys know what it's like to be me. Some of you know the other parts. Everybody here that is alcoholic knows what it's like to not be able to quit drinking.

You know? For me, that's the important part. He taught me that and I knew this long ago. I just never found the words for it. He taught me that when I take a drink, I can't seem to stop drinking.

When I take a drink, I get thirsty. I take another drink, I get a little more thirsty. I take another drink, I get a little bit more thirsty. I have never thought to myself, I like the taste of bottled water. I've never sat down and drank a whole case of bottled water and a 2 liter of bottled water in a night.

You know? I've told myself I like the taste of beer, but I tell you what, I like the effect produced by alcohol. I like what it does for me. It gets me out of me enough to be okay in the world and comfortable. And once I start drinking, I don't seem to be able to stop.

I don't know how many times I thought to myself, I'm gonna have a couple of drinks. I've never ever told myself, I'm gonna drink a half a case of beer, half for the Cuervos in 3 hours and throw up clam chowder through my nose. Not in the play. That happened a lot, man. Wasn't eating a lot of solid food.

So, you know, I I came to believe little by little that you guys might have a solution to a problem of my type because you were describing what it was I did, and you guys were doing things that seemed to work. You know? I didn't think it was gonna work for me, but I had to believe that it worked for you. And, really, that very first night, I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to care of something bigger than me, which at the time was AA and Kane. You know?

And since then, what my sponsor has done, what his job has been, whichever sponsor I've had, was to get me closer to a God of my understanding. No human power can restore me to sanity. But my sponsor, little by little, gets me closer to a God of my understanding so that I can be restored to sanity. I sat down and I did that inventory, and I wrote down things that I was never gonna tell anybody. For a while, there was about 8, 10 of those I was not gonna put down on paper.

No way in hell. And I'm sitting there debating this one day with myself. I can't put this down. I can't put this down. And it was like this voice popped in my head and said, what do you think you've been running from, Paul?

Crap. Write it down. I wrote it down in elven because I'd been studying Tolkien's handwriting, and, I didn't want anybody to discover these things. So I had to memorize how to read it to do my 5th step, and I did my 5th step, and he looked over and saw that. And, what the hell is that?

Well, it's Alvin. Keep driving. He told me one day you will sponsor people just like you, Paul, and I have. The step I hung on was step 6. I know everybody's got a step somewhere where they hung on.

They say step 6 is the one that separates men from the boys or the women for the girls or whatever you wanna call it. But, for me, that was where I hung. You know? I went through and I did all these d I looked at all this stuff and realized everything that was wrong, and it was all Paul's a problem. I am the one common denominator in every single thing that in my life sucks.

Paul is always involved. You know? So are you willing to let go of that stuff? You're willing to have God remove these? Nope.

There's a couple of those I was having a really good time with. Remember those times I wasn't calling my sponsor? Yeah. I was a year sober actually, and my sponsor introduced me for my 1 year, and he said that he could count the number of, suggestions that I did not take on one hand. And that would be Amanda, Heather, Bobby, Joe, Renee.

These are things that, you know, your first year of sobriety can be real difficult. You do what you want. Really, it's none of my business. I don't give a happy hoot one direction or the other, but, I guarantee that, in my experience, I screwed everything up. Damn near killed myself about 4 times over stuff like that.

So, anyway, step 6, I finally did that thing one time too many, and I realized that I was sick and tired of who I was. I reached that point of, once again, can't live with it, can't live without it, can't keep going this way. What do I do? Have you had enough? Are you sick and tired of living this white ball?

Yeah. So I wound up. I pulled I called him up. I said, what do I do? He said, go to such and such page.

Read these 2 paragraphs. So I did, and I went in there, and I read 6, and I read 7, and I did the little prayer in 7. And I said, what do I do now? He said, remember that 4 step? Yeah.

I said, that's your 8 step. Let's go get ready, start making amends. Jesus. I know a lot of these people and a lot of them are still not happy with me. You know, I work with some of these people and, I wound up, I was making amends.

I'm making amends to people at work, taking them aside, telling them, you know what, about you guys, but I love to talk smack about people. You know, 12 and 12 calls that character assassination, a plight form of murder. I love talking about people behind their back. And I do it in a way that I'm just trying to help you understand why this person is different over here, you know, because they've got this and this and this and this and this. You know?

And what I do is I try and get everybody on my side. I want you on my side, you know? And I've done that in alcoholics anonymous a great number of times. I've had to make amends to a lot of people. You know?

Oddly enough, just in coincidence, you know, I've had, I think, 3 people make amends to me since I've been here. And I talked to my sponsor about that, and he said, well, Paul, that's because you're sicker than most, and you have to make a lot more amends. It's always my fault. You know? But it's true.

You know? I I I do a lot of stuff, and I have to maintain this thing really a lot. I have to really concentrate on staying in this program, doing these steps. I have to keep coming to this on a regular basis. I work with other alcoholics.

I've been I've been working with somebody since I was 4 months sober. You know? That person's still in this room. I've been working with people all along. A number of them are still in this room.

I don't sponsor them all still, but, for me, I've found you know, listen to the history of AA and, they talk about how Bill, when he got sober, went around for, like, 6 months trying to work with other alcoholics, trying to give this thing away that was given so freely, trying to give someone else the buzz, you know, the good time. This is where it's at. He's trying to give this away. And for like 6 months, people are stealing his silverware and lying to him and getting drunk and it's not working and he's just putting all this effort in. It seems like nothing's happening.

Understanding he went to Lewis at about 6 months sober and said, you know what, this is ridiculous. We've got our stuff stolen one more time. You know? I don't know why I'm doing this. It's not working.

Not one person has stayed sober. She said, you did. And to me, that's a really big deal. Not everybody I've worked with has stayed sober, but I have been trying to give back this buzz ever since I got it. I came in here, and you guys gave me something that you cannot buy.

Buy. You cannot pick it up at Walmart. The cops can't give it to you. The police can't give it to you. Your parents can't give it to you.

The priest can't give it to you. What what you've given me back here is an opportunity to earn this all back. You know? You know? If you want self respect, you do respectable acts.

If you want dignity, you carry yourself with dignity. If you want self esteem, you do esteemable acts. I mean, there's this long, long list of things. If you want it, you gotta go out and get it. You know?

I did 67, and I was waiting for this between 78 where this God comes thundering out of the heavens with his flaming chariot and lightning bolts and thunder and wipes away all my character defects, and I'm wonderful. You know? I was waiting for that. It'd be nice, and I knew it wasn't gonna happen, and it didn't. So I thought, well, it didn't work.

You know? What I've been given is this, I've been given back a choice. I did not have a choice before. I've been given back a choice whether I drink or not. If I take a drink today, I will drink more, physical allergy to alcohol and when I drink, I get thirsty.

I have a mental obsession that tells me that somehow, some way, this time I can have a drink and get away with it. And every time I fall into that, I take a drink, I get thirsty, I wind up drunk, and I find that I don't want to quit anymore. My head changes itself. What you guys have given me is you've given me AA. AA has given me a God.

My God has given me a choice. Today, I have a choice whether I'm gonna drink or not. That mental obsession has been relieved just enough to where I do not have this overpowering need, undeniable power that says you will take a drink sooner or later, Paul. I've been given back a choice today whether I take a drink or not. And I've been given back a choice on all the defects of character that I have.

I have a choice today whether I'm gonna talk smack about you behind your back. I have a choice today whether I'm gonna steal that or not. I have a choice today whether I'm gonna lie on my time card. I have a choice today whether I'm gonna steal things from work. I have a choice today whether I'm gonna talk smack about Kelvin behind his back, which I really get a kick off.

He's just a bigger target. I have a choice on all of these things. You know? And I have a choice whether I really wanna make amends about this crap too. You know?

But that, you know, from that very night, I had, King t and Marcus m came home with me and helped me dump out my booze. And from that following morning on, I have not had to take a drink. I have not had to, jeez. I'm not even gonna go into it. I have not had to do a lot of stuff.

I've been given back a little piece of my, just a little piece of my sanity, you know. And I haven't been given back the life that I had. I've been given something much better, you know. You buy a new house and you you have to go in or you buy an old house and you want got a used house, you have to go in there and rip out everything and replace it with new stuff. You know, I think Bob D said something about that in a talk I heard once.

And, it's true. Everything of value in my life that I thought was of value has been replaced with something much better today. The life I have today just blows me away. I still cannot believe that some dope fiend, alcoholic, street kid carne loser is in the kind of job that I'm in, with the kind of woman that I'm with, in the kind of home group that I'm with, wearing a bloody suit for Christ's sake. I don't do suits.

I'm leather and jeans, baby. 2 foot of hair. Get it on. You know? What I am doing here still blows me away.

I don't know. But evidently, there's a power out there greater than me that still has some kind of a use for me because I should be dead. And if if it wasn't for Alcoholics Anonymous and all of you guys, I would have missed it all. Thank you for my life.