Don P. from Aurora, CO speaking (for the last time) in Denver, CO

Let's say the serenity prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Thank you. I give you our good friend, Don P.

Did you bring the Ferris thing? Oh, no. Never mind. My name is Don, and I'm an alcoholic. I do not suffer from any of the symptoms of alcoholism.

I, The main one, of course, being the physical allergy, the alcohol that causes me to want another drink as soon as I take one. Well, I don't drink, so don't worry about that one. The energy is the mental the mental obsession that caused me to take that drink whether I want to or not. And God has been very kind to me. I don't see alcohol.

It has to be drawn to my attention, which makes me extremely vulnerable. Turn it up a little bit. Speak Maybe if I talk this way, it'd be better. Indulge me, please. I'm working on part of a lung.

I did not know I was an alcoholic when I got here. I was certified by one government agency as a sociopath type 2. I'm still not sure what it is, but I can tell you it ain't good. My federal parole officer said I was a psychopath. And, the medical people said I was a manic depressive drug addict.

I was hiding my alcoholism behind some real drama, man. You can get by 2, maybe even 3 of them, but not all of them. My favorite was manic depressive, and please understand that's a very real condition. My son has it. For me, it was the game.

I learned real early on that if you want people to stay away from you, throw them a mood swinger to you. Works every time. You have to get really good at it because if you're if you're you do it too often, they lock you in and try to fix it. And you got a whole new game to deal with. If you don't do it well enough, they invite you to parties in the stand up comic.

That's what I'm trying to avoid anyway. God uses what's at hand always. He will not mess my life up to make yours better. Get over it. But he is what's at hand, and why I came to the end of my road Christmas 9, 1967.

The end of the road is very simple. Did the I spent a week doing the most thorough inventory I've ever done in my life. Meaning, it was honest. I looked at who I was and realized I had become completely useless. Great place to be.

Doesn't feel good. If you're in a so you can feel better, go somewhere else. Really? Well, what it did was bring me to that point of total surrender. See, as long as I can be use useful, I can stay here.

Wanna become useless, I gotta go. Had 2 little boys that have been on the road with me. A little emotional. Pardon me. For four and a half years, they went through and they're doing arrests.

Oh, I got that. I need some water. They went through everything with me, and that have been more better off in a foster home than I knew it. The upshot was that I took a 2 month supply of Methamphetamine hydrochloride. Good stuff.

Right out of the drugstore. And shot up my arm, drank everything in the house, and we done died. What a bitch it was in the morning. I woke up. And what I woke up to was a simple thing.

I'm a complete failure at living and a complete failure at dying. What a bitch. I'm still in a body that won't quit and a mind that won't work, and the police are at the door. Now there's your first clue that I ain't dead. They don't need them in either of the places I was taught you're gonna go.

And I couldn't have verbalized it then, but the attitude was very simple. My my being was I'm wanting to go anywhere anyone says. Do anything anyone says if I don't have to be him anymore. And I haven't been. I came today fully awake.

No idea what to do with it. Just fully awake. Now I get most of my lessons from my grandchildren, And I was thinking the other day, my little granddaughter, Gianna, when the babies are restless, they give them to me. Because I know what to do with babies. Lay them on your chest and Pretty soon they go to sleep.

For god's sake, don't yell at them. Can you imagine that? A crying baby and you yell at them to shut them up. Someone had hit you in the head with a stick. But she was, I hung her on to sleep and, was looking at her.

I thought, you know, this is it would be I can't imagine coming back into the room, waking that baby up, and then leaving the room. What a terrible thing. So Because God uses whatever's at hand. Oh, I'm sorry. Fly me to the moon.

They had 9 charges on me, and the first one called for 3 years, the life of the penitentiary. I've been in 3 of them, which doesn't mean anything because that's not that's not the deal. Better? Yeah. Well, you missed all the good stuff.

Sorry. We plea bargained that one. The, they took me in a room of my attorney and the federal people because I still owed them 5 years, and they were kinda anxious to have me back. Instead, if I would plead guilty to a reduced charge they had available, she got out in the a group 2 hours from here and a charge available that they would, give me a one and a half to 3 year sentence. And the other option was to go back to the feds for 5 years, and I'm not stupid.

So I took the deal. Now the federal officer that negotiated this changed his mind at the last minute. He'd been in touch with the hospital, and on paper, I'm untreatable. Sociopath doesn't know the difference between right and wrong. How are you gonna help them?

They're a psychopath. A sociopath does. They just don't give a damn, and I'm both. So they said just lock him up so they don't hurt anybody else. And so he, they they did the deal for me.

I was really worried about my social security because what they did was let me plead to guilty on charge. I'm the only one in the state that never plead that way and, which I find interesting. And, I thought I was going to Texas and, where they could fix what was wrong with me. So in 5 days, I'm supposed to be in federal hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, getting fixed. The federal man at the last minute changed his mind.

Said we can't do anything for this one. Just walk him up. So I was taken 5 days later to the fish tank in the Colorado State Penitentiary. Great place built in 1890 4, made out of rock quarried from the great place. Fish fish tank, you don't know, that's where they spend 4 to 6 weeks teaching you how to live in this community, because if you don't learn that quick, you're in trouble.

They thump you and bump you and decide where they're gonna put you to work and all that. In our 3rd week, 3 convicts came over to talk to us. I knew they were convicts because they had green clothes with numbers on. Ugly, except for Bruce. Bruce is kinda cute.

He really was. But an old crusty old bastard named Doc got to put him first. And he said this, my name is Doc, and I am an alcoholic. That means that I'm powerless over alcohol and drugs and guards and all of the other circumstances in my life. And if any of you smart bachelors think you can still manage your lives, looks the reward the state just gave you for the nifty job you've been doing.

What I'm gonna do, argue with him? He said your very best thinking got you the penitential. You're not doing too good, are you? Well, no. Then he gave the promise, we can show you a new way of thinking.

We can show you how to learn to live a life that will make sense to you. My life had never made sense to anybody because I was trying to make it sense to you. In one quick look, you said that don't make sense. From the time I was little, people would come to me and say, why did you do that? And early on, I told them the truth not very long, but I told them, I don't know.

I said, well, you must know. You did it. Okay. They told us a number of things that day. The main one was that they invited us to what they called a 12 step study school.

You were not allowed to attend the AA meeting till you completed the step work. You weren't fit. They brought real people in from the outside. And my sole partner and I, Jim, didn't have a hell of a lot to do anyway. So we and Jim was one of those guys that one of the first emotions that returned to me was compassion.

I didn't know what it was, but I knew that I knew why I was there. Jim didn't know. He had done what you and I have all been terrified of. In a car, drunk, in a blackout, he killed people. So what the hell is it called?

I've been to NA, in the federal penitentiary. It didn't hurt a damn thing because I'm not a drug addict. I too love speed. When when treatment came out with that drug of choice, that's mine. The drug I don't have any choice over at all is alcohol.

So I'm very blessed because when I got here, the entire focus of the a was recovery from alcoholism, which if you think about it, brings about sobriety all by itself. Unfortunately, I'm a little concerned about AA today. The focus is shifting to sobriety and don't drink. We're told at the very beginning that's something we can't do. So why spend any time with it?

Techniques and styles and charts and graphs, questionnaires, and, well, God help us. But I was spiritually awake, which meant I began to see things spiritually. One of the mistakes I had made most of my life is that I thought I was a human being trying to have a spiritual experience, and I had lots of them. I'm a spiritual being having a human experience. And what is that for you?

Bring it on. I'm not gonna outlive it anyway, so bring it on. But I was the 3 guys that were working with it, there were 3 of them. Bruce and Phil and Roy, completely different personalities, but the message was identical. Bruce was doing a naturalized sentence for a double murder he'd committed in a shootout downtown Denver.

The man, telling me the story could not do that, and I could see that. And I asked you about I've been taught to ask questions. He said, that's right. I've been changed. God changed me, And the only reason I stayed in the a was to be changed.

I didn't know I needed to be sober. I was 5 and a half months sober when I got here. How much more sober am I gonna get? God changed me. I didn't care who changed him.

He'd been changed. Roy was, I I smoked with some stuff across the border using my kids as a a it's a terrible story, but y'all have one as my cover. And, the guy that hired me for the job turned us all in. So, you know, when you play with snakes, you get bit. That was so reprehensible of what I did.

I drove a die. Now I understand the kids now are on the road for four and a half years, and, everybody has a hole. You got 1? Mother, father, aunt, uncle, friend, crash on my couch for a few days, rest up, fatten up. And then, my dad was our ace in the hole.

He had a carriage house, and the kids and I lived in it. And I'd just come off a hard road trip. And we were sitting there, and I decided it's time for me to put my life back together because all I've ever wanted to be was a good father and a good son. So I'm busy, put my life back together, and Albert called from Albuquerque. Said we got a problem.

We got 30 kilos of really good grass up as far as whereas, and our driver got arrested on a traffic charge. And it's laying a motel. We need somebody to bring it across. Will you do it? Well, I'm trying to get my life together, so I said, of course.

I didn't do it for money. At that time, it was $200 a key. That's chump change. I did it for prestige. I was the only one in the entire United States this little syndicate could think, could pull this off.

I'm gonna go into old Mexico and rescue the guns. I take great I get tickled because you know who the president of Mexico is now? A man named Fox. That's Zorro. Zorro's finally running a show.

Anyway, so that piece was laying there, and God used whatever it had. Bruce was incapable of committing that act again. That's why I wanted. Roy Nichols was a bank robber. Or well, not really a bank.

He was a robber. He wasn't very good. But Roy's big cake was robbing supermarkets. He really liked the thrill of going from station to station to station, because every minute you're in there, you're in higher danger. What he really liked was when he put a gun to your head and watched your face.

Didn't do it for the money, so I began to identify with him. He was not capable of doing that anymore, and I asked him about it and he said, that's right. I've been changed, and God changed me. They didn't say they changed me. They didn't say my sponsor changed me.

They didn't even say the big book changed me. God changed me. Now Roy Roy's an interesting case because we by the way, we went through the 12 step study school in 5 weeks. In the 6th week, I was given a new group. And with my sponsor's help, it was now my turn.

And, every now and then, Roy would get pissed at the group. You ever get pissed at your group? Just couldn't stand it anymore, and he disappeared for 2 or 3 weeks. And went back to sell house 7 and hid out. And, of course, when it came out, I said, what have you been doing?

He said, well, I was completely off base, and I've been writing inventory so I can get clear. Now I can come back. Phil Gutierrez, god, I love Phil. Had 13 kids. Obviously, he wasn't drunk all the time, but Phil was a very dangerous human being.

He came from Guam when he was 17 because they couldn't handle him anymore, and he had family here, so they sent him here. And a few years later, they wanna send him back to Guam and Guam wouldn't take him, so they put him in our penitentiary. Because it seems the last time he got drunk, he threw 3 people out of a 3 story window. I lived in cell b 49 right. B block, 4 story up, 9 sill down on the right side.

And this is a guy who throws people out of windows. And he came to me one day with a smile on his face. Now I don't know if you've seen Oriental smile, but this is the captain of the pirate ship. He said, I've been thinking. I've been here 7 years, and you're the first person I've sponsored.

You will stay sober. As you wish. Phil taught me about love. Starts right there. Touch, which has rescued a penitentiary, but nobody ever questioned Phil's touching or his love.

These were my mentors. I don't find the word sponsor in the big book. I do spy find the word protege, which well defines there's 2 places that define sponsorship without or it describes it without defining it. If you're serious about this, it says we suggest you find somebody who can show you precisely how to recover. We call that sponsorship now, and that's good.

Sponsorship is so important that I don't wanna demean it in any way, but it's gotten skewed. Sponsorship is the act of taking someone through a proven process that will awaken them to the spirit within. That's the only thing that's gonna save your ass. I can't. Nobody else can.

But the spirit will and does. So how do I tap into that? I'm asked to do the one thing I'm incapable of doing, get honest. Anyway, that put me on a track of some things spiritually. We're healers.

We're storytellers. We're not smart. If we were smart, we wouldn't be here. We'd be home watching law and order. I don't even know what it is, but it doesn't sound nice to me.

I like to watch Evan Castello. So I look at the great healers. She's 1. My wife was. A nurse in a research unit where many of her babies died.

So I watched her. She picked those babies up and pathed them. That's all she did. And say, you're in the right place. You're gonna be alright.

That's what we're supposed to do when the new people come in. You know? We take them by the hand. We touch them. Then I looked at the great master, and what was it he actually did?

Well, he he was kind of a traveler. Spent a lot of time on donkeys and on dirt roads. He'd come upon some guy who was crippled, blind, had running sores, and, sitting by the side of the road dying. Now this guy thought he was alone because he was crippled and blind and had running sores. The master knew better.

He was crippled and blind and had running sores because he thought he was alone. So the first thing the master did was say, you you cannot be alone once that happens. You don't have to like it, but you're no longer alone. Then he'd give him this. You don't have to do this anymore, you know.

Sound a little familiar? And because he had the understanding that I am you and you are me, then he would say to them, would you like to get up? Not everybody wants to get up. And if the man said, well, yeah, he'd say, alright. Now be real still because I'm gonna give you the the magic.

Get up. And he said it with such conviction that it was believable. I believe the lies ran out the wind. So my, test since I got to a was to be believable. I am an alcoholic.

I know exactly what that means. I know I'm completely powerless over everything, particularly this thing. In fact, Janice, some night when you got nothing but law and order, there's a repeat. Just tie yourself in your chair and let her run. Make sure you're tied down tight.

So if I come and look you in the eye and tell you you don't ever have to drink again, you don't. And I can say that with certainty because I have it. And I'm incapable of not drinking, but I haven't. And if you'd like to learn how that occurs, I'll show you. I, I'm no good as a relationship counselor.

Well, I've never been able to figure out how to have a successful sick relationship. What can I do? We didn't spend a whole hell of a lot of time worrying about not drinking and sobriety. We, we just didn't. We spent most of our time not learning new stuff, but getting rid of the old stuff.

So it isn't in the way. You you got a busy mind? Shut it off. The only way I know to deal with issues is create brand new issues. I'm tired.

So I'm no good at that. If you come to me and ask me as your sponsor, which job should I take, first one is gonna give you money for god's sake. You're never gonna be CEO of General Motors, but you might make a good dishwasher. I don't know. Just take the damn job.

Early on, Bruce said, are you tired of getting busted? Quit going with those cops. Oh, Pardon me. It takes a little time to catch up now and then. Said, would you like some money?

Of course. Get a job. And, once you've got it, you might even think about showing up for it now, man. And while you're there, you might wanna do some work. And at the end of a prescribed period, if they decide, they'll just give you money.

It'll never be enough, but it will always be enough. So I don't have any money problems. I married a rich woman. Yeah. Rich beyond belief.

One of my heroes is Mickey. He's getting trouble now and then. And I went to the guidebook and said, when you're screwed up, go find somebody more screwed up. See if you can help them. And sometimes the best help I can give you is to tell you how screwed up I am, then you'll feel better.

Then maybe we can do something. We can go down to detox. Talk to drunks. My real hero in that family is Marie. She puts up with this shit.

One last thing, and then I wanna turn it over to my 2 dear friends. God uses what's at hand, and you told me absolute honesty is absolute. What does absolute mean? It means absolute. What does thoroughly mean?

Thoroughly. And so when I came out, I was supposed to go back to Texas and the same parole officer changed his mind. I went to the federal judge and said, he's been in AA for a year and a half. Let's put him on the street and watch him for 6 days. We'll know when he's gonna make it.

So they did. Now it was Memorial Day weekend. I had $17 in that suit they gave you with the flashing sun on the back seat just out. And after the feds processed me, they turned me over to the state. And this is an old 6 foot 6 former narcotics cop.

I was a acquaintance of his. So I'm not a drug addict, but I was a pretty good dealer. That was back in the days when you gave all these acid away. I hope nobody put it in the reservoir. And his words to me was you will report to me every night after work, which means get a job by tomorrow or back you go.

Not a hell of a lot to interpret or to process. Get a damn job. So I I knew I could work at Burger King out in Aurora and understand I I truly do live by the spirit, the promptings of the spirit. Never been wrong yet. And, I'm in pretty good shape spiritually.

I got to the bus stop, and the bus had a new sign on it. Carry have exact fare. Drivers carry no change. Couldn't get on the bus. But on my way, out of the jail, one of the guys I did time with gave me a little note.

He said, if you need work, just go see this guy. So I can't get on this bus, and he's only 3 blocks away. Minute Man daily labor service. He didn't say get a job with General Motors. He said get a job.

So I walked on down there. In total and absolute honesty is, it's a trip. You're at risk every time you do it. Walked into Jack's little place of business. He's I said, Jack, my name is John Fritz, and, I just got out of the penitentiary.

I'm an alcoholic, and I've also had a little drug problem, but I need a job. He said, you're just what I've been looking for. Well, in my position, I'll take anything he's got. He's got things to fill. So he got me on a hotel room and changed that ugly suit, into some jeans, and god uses what's at hand.

He, that's when we went down to Dixon Paper Company, Dixon said, well, we don't hire ex cons. Don't bother me. I'm not an ex con. I'm a man, and I've been to prison. There's a difference.

But we can't start him till tomorrow. If you work on your payroll, we could start him. So we went back down, and Jack was a little nervous. He said, I've got one more opening. If you wanna work today, you can.

This is about 11. And, this young kid with a bandage on his arm, he and I went out to Abbott Laboratories. Abbott makes the stuff I like that very best. So I'm spending the afternoon unloading box cars or trailers into man, did I work hard and made the discovery that it's gone. This is gone.

Didn't want it. I worked so hard they offered me a full time job, and I had enough sense to say, and I don't think so. So I went back to Dixon Paper the next day and I'm loading box cars of paper. And, I checked in at York Street because that's where you told me to go. Don't miss York Street.

It's the best reason in the world to stay sober. So I was able to kinda help some of the other guys get some job. A guy named Al, who is about 6 weeks sober, he and I went to work on loan boxcars. And 1 this is in June or July, hot, and he looked in the boxcar where I was loading stuff out. He said, do me a favor.

Climb down here and look down the tracks and tell me what you see. Big, un ugly, molting parrot walking toward us. I said, I see a ugly parrot, Al. Said, thank God. I thought I was 17.

He said, you know we gotta catch it because we're gonna tell this story at York Street, and we don't have a bird. So I got him a parrot, and I had some fun. A couple months later, they called me in and offered me a job on the docks working for them. Apparently, they hire men who've been to prison. Well, that meant I had to fill out an application.

They want your last 10 years work history. Let's see. 1966, drug smuggler. So well, that's what I did for Levitt. And they never read them anyway.

They just went ahead and hired me. And, couple months after that, the dispatcher called me in, and he had my application in his hand and a funny look on his face. He said, did you really do that? I said, yeah. I did.

He said, did you get it across? I said, yeah. I did. He said, well, I've been thinking. We have this little delivery truck that delivers paper to the print houses in downtown Denver and goes out east on Copax and delivers sacks.

It seems to me you have the necessary skills to get things from here to there under difficult circumstances. So I got that job, which set me up for being able to make a very important amends that I don't have time to talk about, but it was very important. A real job driving a truck. So whatever just be honest. Tell the truth.

That guy decided where the car is gonna fall. I'm about to run out of steam, and, I no longer keep my steam in the car, so I'm gonna have to do something different. The, knowing that I would not have the stamina. And knowing also that, well, you're all lovely. You love me and brought me here for that.

I'm only the messenger. It ain't about me. So I got 2 big guns. 1 out of Seattle and one out of the Manhattan, Kansas. And know this.

I love And one of my old mentors describe that for me. Love is the active concern for the welfare and the growth of that which you love. So I love you. I know it's scary. So I was looking at of course, I'm looking my life over because it's short.

What's my legacy? Because of the presence of God and whatever he's given me, I've been able to open a lot of people up where they could love me. That means they're now open to love. Let me go. Active concern for the welfare and the growth of that which you love.

So it is. Oh, Wes Parish. God, he was ugly. Man. So this lunatic showed up in my life, 14 years sober, going struck raving mad because you've been in AA too long.

I had no clue as to what that meant. And, I watched him wake up. And I would like you to hear