The Isanti Saturday night live group in Isanti, MN

And the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, I haven't found it necessary to take a drink, drug, mood altering chemical, nor stick a gun in my mouth all day long, and for that, I'm eternally grateful and forever in debt. My home group is simple, not easy. We meet in Cambridge 5 o'clock Sunday nights. If you get a chance to come on in and go through the big book with us, you're more than welcome. The big book asked me to share in a general way what it used to be like, what happened, and what it's like now.

I'm gonna do my best to do that, hopefully mixing in some real quick, I'd like to thank Clark for allowing me to come up here and speak and for the people that came out to support me tonight. That being said, I might as well get right into it. I was born in Cambridge. I come from an alcoholic home. That is not an opinion or a judgment on my part.

My parents met and were married in Alcoholics Anonymous, and gave birth to the wonderful guy you see standing before you. You know, there's some threads that run through AA that I can really identify with, and and one of those is that I never felt like I quite fit in. And the way that manifests itself for me is that either there's something very wrong with me or there's something very wrong with all of you, depending on the mood I'm in that day. Growing up, there's a lot of chaos going on. I don't think that just alcoholics go through that.

There was a lot of drama and quite frankly, I took it way too personal. There were things that didn't have anything to do with me that I made about me. My mother, at a very early age, had some issues with losing her mother that she was trying to deal with. And just to give you an idea of sensitive how sensitive I was, I remember sitting outside of the bathroom one day trying to get her to come out, trying to, I don't know, comfort her, ease her as she was crying in the bathroom. Not knowing how to deal with the situation that she was dealing with, she yelled at me and told me to go away.

I know today that she was doing the very best she could to deal with that situation. At the time, though, I took that very personal that that was something about me. Now what does that have to do with my drinking? Well, if you're uncomfortable with every situation and take everything very personally, are sensitive to everything going on around you, it leaves you a little restless. I needed a drink long before I ever got one.

One thing that I do mention that I don't get into details about from the podium is that I have been abused in every sense of the word. Physical, emotional, sexual, mental. The only reason why I bring that up is because I know there's a lot of us that crawl through these doors who have been through that stuff. We think that their situation is too bad or that they're different or it's been too hard for them that they can't have this. And I want you to know my experience shows that that's just not the case.

So on to the drinking, I suppose. There's a whole lot of drama going on, and, you know, coming where I come from with some of the abuse stuff that happened, I am very uncomfortable in my own skin. I do see these family members that fight and argue and can't get along drinking. They're having a good time at the holidays. Everybody's laughing and talking and and it's a good thing.

I wanna know more about that. You know? I I just from very early age, I remember wanting to know more about that. I would try to smuggle a little here, smuggle a little there. I never quite got enough in me to do what alcohol would end up doing for me.

So the first drink I had, I mean, I remember it, but I didn't get drunk. You know? It was a sip of beer when I was, like, 5, 6 years old at the babysitter's house. But I do remember the first time I got drunk. First time I got drunk was with my father.

We had had a rough day doing some chores and whatnot, and he decided that, you know, I was, say, 14, and he would, buy me a couple of Colt 45, 22 ounces. And and from right out right out of the gate, it was, I'm gonna drink 1 tonight, and I'm gonna drink 1 tomorrow because this is a pretty big deal. My dad bought me some beer. You know? That night, I drank both of them, laid on the floor acting like a fool, and, the drinking didn't just take off from there.

I wasn't allowed to. I mean, I was 14, 15 years old. I do know the moment from which I turned from possibly hard drinking to an alcoholic. In a sense of events that happened, drama that I'm not gonna share from the podium because it ain't my deal, me and my father ended up moving from Colorado to Michigan. And, things got rough out there.

I will say this, we had ourselves a little gunfight, and no guns no guns went off, no shots were fired. I'm not gonna sit up here and say that, but guns were drawn and there was a heated exchange. And I made I made a decision that night through all the stuff that's gone on in my life up to this point, the fact that my father blames me for his life, which I already do, and the fact that he would pull a gun on his own son, I must not be much of a person. And if I'm not much of a person, there ain't really a whole lot of reason for me to be here, and I made the decision to kill myself that night. I grabbed a whole bunch of booze and I grabbed a whole bunch of pills.

I grabbed a Smith and Wesson 41 Mag, put it all in a backpack and went to the apartment we were first staying at when we moved out to Michigan. And I took those pills and I took that booze, and I had a couple of cigarettes. And when it came time where I determined it was time to pull that trigger, and I stuck that gun in my mouth, the thing that happens to me that doesn't happen to normal drinkers had happened. Everything was alright. I I really honestly couldn't tell you what I was so upset about as to why I would stick a gun in my mouth.

I mean, I was at peace and ease. I knew the meaning of the word serenity. I was good to go. They found me. I drank some charcoal, went to the emergency room, went to the wards, stayed there for about a month and a half.

I got out and got back to Minnesota just in time to get the news that my father committed suicide. If there's one day in my life that forever changed the course of it, it would have to be January 8, 1999. And I don't blame that for my alcoholism. I was gonna I was gonna be an alcoholic one way or another. I just caught the bullet.

That's just all there is to it. But that day right then and there definitely sped things up a bit, because I made the decision right then and there that I was gonna do what I had to do to feel comfortable in my own skin, that I couldn't take this world, that I was too sensitive for it, that I could not walk like this anymore. I started drinking and using every day I could. My 16th birthday came up shortly after that. I lost my virginity, dropped out of school, and hit the streets.

Not gonna get too much into the next year and a half, two years of my life because there's a whole lot of outside issues in there that I just don't feel comfortable talking about from a podium. But I will say that I got absolutely burned up by the streets. I got absolutely burned up by drugs, and it was way out of hand, absolutely out of hand, at the age of 17 years old. I'm doing the crappie flop on the floor of a gas station 7:30 on a Sunday morning, getting hauled to the ER by the paramedics and checking myself out of treatment within 24 hours because I honestly meant when I said I don't have a problem. That was the lie.

I don't have a problem. Just having a good time, you know, living on the street, selling on-site issues, doing massive amounts. Not a problem. That was just a little OD. Happens to everybody.

Got out of treatment that time, spent a day there. About 3 months down the road, finally, I'm just burned up. I called my mom up. I said, I need to go to treatment. I need to come off the street.

I I I'm going nuts, absolutely insane, and she brought me to treatment. I went through well, I detoxed in a nut ward, first of all. After the ward, they sent me to a 20 or a 10 day treatment program. After the 10 day treatment program, I went to a 28 day treatment program. After the 28 day treatment program, I went to an outpatient treatment program.

After that was the Astra Care and that whole deal. I was basically in treatment for just under a year. I went to a ton of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. There wasn't a whole lot of NA around, and I went to a lot of AA meetings. I mean, 10, 12 a week.

Maybe a little bit less sometimes, but definitely made up for it other times. I stayed sober as long as I possibly possibly could on the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I hung on for dear life from fear, fear alone. Fear kept me sober for just over a year. At some point, I started breaking down, and I started going nuts, and I started coming to the tables of Alcoholics Anonymous saying, I I don't feel better.

You told me if I came to 90 meetings in 90 days, if I got a sponsor, if if I just, you know, didn't drink and didn't use and and came to meetings, I was gonna be alright, and I'm going nuts. And the answer I got to my dilemma to the insanity that was going on in my life was you need to go to more meetings. I held on a little bit longer. Eventually, I I can't take it anymore. I'm done.

I'm out. I'm out of here. I handed my key to my sponsee. I said you need to you need to chair that meeting. It'll be good for your sobriety.

What do you do? I'm going out drinking. See, but I had convinced myself along the way that I wasn't an alcoholic, that I was a drug addict. I just I could drink. I could have a couple beers with the guys at work, you know.

I I I just wanted to be a normal 19 year old. That's all. I can have a couple of beers. Right? My first night of drinking, I'm gonna have a couple of beers.

I end up chugging down 12 pack of Mickey's grenades, end up drinking a whole bunch of keg beer, and fall up a hill. How you do that? Not quite sure, but I did it. Fell up the hill, went home, called my girlfriend by a different name, and we were off to the races. You know?

It's, you know, good times. Good times. And it got worse. You know, I I really have a deal with talking about drugs from a podium. I'm gonna illustrate this one point and then that'll be about it.

The line for me always is what a person had a problem with alcohol and drugs, whatever. We all I think we all have that line. Some of us, it's a a hobo on the street drinking out of a paper bag, and and some of us, it's people that's lost everything he owns, whatever. I'm never gonna be that bad. I'm never gonna hit that line.

My whole deal was this, if you shoot up drugs, you got a problem. If you don't, well, you're not an addict. And after a year in Alcoholics Anonymous, after 90 meanings, 90 days, 5 times, I found myself drunk and shooting up. One thing I said I would never do. So they talk about a progressive illness.

I know that. I know that. And I tried to commit suicide again, and I drug my butt back in the AA again, and I said, you guys are right. What do I do? Where do I go from here?

What I heard was go to 90 meetings in 90 days. Keep coming back. I tried it for about another month. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. The same old insanity was running through my head again, and I left.

I'm out of here. I'm gone. See you. And it was no big deal. It wasn't a production.

It wasn't a slip. It was just somebody said, hey. You know, the guy's after work. We have a few beers. You wanna come with us?

That's how you get to know people. And I said, yeah. Sure. Did not even think about the fact that I had just went to an AA meeting yesterday, We were off to the races. I drank for about about the next 5 years, and all the signs came along the way.

You need to go back to AAA. You need to go back to AAA. And with my prior experience in Alcoholics Anonymous, I said the war cry, I will never go back to AA. Never. Absolutely not happen.

Sometimes it was I'm not an alcoholic. That's what I tell myself. Sometimes it was AA doesn't work for me. It all depended on the time of year, I suppose. So I drank and I drank and I drank.

Lot of things happened, lot of drama, lot of war stories, lot I mean, I could spend all hours talking about it. I lost a job well, quit a job before I got fired, got a new job where I get laid off in the wintertime. I was able to not get drunk during the week most times. Towards the end, it wasn't that easy, but as long as I don't have a beer, I'm not getting drunk tonight. So I can go to work tomorrow, so I can make the money I need to make, so that things can look good, and so that I can get drunk this weekend like I like to get drunk.

It's a very easy deal. See, as long as I have the house and the cars and the motorcycle and the wife and the kids, I can justify that I'm not an alcoholic because alcoholics don't have those things. I've never had a DWI. I'm not an alcoholic. I've never been to detox.

I'm not an alcoholic. So I get laid off. My anger's gone. There's no job to hold me to being sober during the week. The anger's over with, and I started hitting her hard every night.

You know, there's a part of the big leagues talks about pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. I know that. I woke up day after day at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, after coming home at about 7, 8 o'clock in the morning, absolutely lip dragging drunk, I would wake up at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and my 2 little baby boys would be laying in bed next to me with dirty diapers, not having eaten, and I I don't wanna do this. I don't wanna be that type of father. This is not me.

And every day, I would tell myself, I'm not gonna drink today. I'm not gonna drink today. By 5 o'clock, I'd be having my first one, and by 6:30, I'd be out of the house. So that goes on and that goes on. I'm drinking and I'm drinking and I'm drinking, and this voice starts coming in my head to anybody who's came here and then left.

Maybe you can relate. You need to go back to you need to go back to I will never go back to alcoholics anonymous. The last week of my drinking was absolutely a blast. It was absolutely a blast. I had separated from my wife, was getting new numbers, was was hitting the bars, was having a good old time.

Saturday night, I drink myself into a stupor. I'm dancing on the bar, girl in one arm, Budweiser in the other. Life is good. Got a picture of that, in fact. After the party, after the bar is closed, we go back to the house and just sit and drink and drink and drink, start doing a little bit of outside issues, getting a little bit of a Superman complex.

There's 2 people sitting in the kitchen and they're playing chicken, where you hold your arms up together and put a cigarette between them, and whoever pulls away first is a chicken, apparently. I'm like Marty McFly from Back to the Future. I cannot hear someone call me a chicken. I'm sitting there trying to ignore it. You know what I mean?

That's not going on in there. I'll just drink, and it'll be good. And, you know, eventually, they started throwing the insults and calling me, female anatomy from a podium, I guess. It's not what they called me, but I'm not gonna say it. And I had to do something, you know.

I have to act because I'm a scared, frightened, abused little boy living in a 23 year old, 6 foot 4, 250 pound body, and I gotta prove to you that I deserve the body I got, I guess. I go into the kitchen, put a cigarette out on my neck, say, let's do this. Throw my arm up, guy backs off, I win. Right? That ain't good enough.

We alcoholics are very good at going above and beyond the point of destruction when we need to. You know? Can go above and beyond as long as it's horrible and painful. And I decided to burn about a 2 inch scar into my arm with a cigarette, blowing on it to keep the cigarette going. You know, people would say stuff like, oh, you're probably too drunk to feel that.

No. I'm pretty sure I felt it, actually. I felt it. I, smelled it. I you know, it was just it was a lot of fun.

Now, I still hadn't proven that I was a man. You know, to these guys, they're thinking I'm psychotic. I'm thinking, well, we must go further with this. I take my shirt off, start pushing the guy around, you know. It's just a big scene.

It's about 7:30 in the morning, you know, Sunday. Bad things happen to me on Sunday mornings. I don't know why. We get into a pushing match. We get into a little fight.

This guy's supposed to be staying in my house where I'm separated from my wife. Well, the logical thing to do after having a few more shots of liquor and after my buddy sits there and calls me more wonderful names is to go kill this guy. I'm gonna go get him. I hop in my car, barely make it there, but seconds and inches, I don't crash. I just about go into the ditch, just about hit a car.

It I'm annihilated. Doesn't bother me. I've never had a DWI. I'm not an alcoholic. I get home, and I'll never forget it as long as I live.

It don't keep me sober but I'll never forget it as long as I live. I walk into that house, I start kicking in closets. I start looking under beds. I start just absolute insanity and anger to find this guy. And if I would've found him, I would've killed him.

At that moment, I was like, well, we're going to prison. You know, it it just it was like watching a horror movie. I didn't find him. He wasn't there. Believe it or not, I'm paranoid sometimes.

I remember my kid coming up to me, and he looked at me, my 2a half year old, and he said, why are you doing this, dad? And I pushed him out of the way. Breaks my heart. Absolutely breaks my heart. Pushed him to the ground, out of the way, and continued my search.

Eventually, I fizzled out. I faded out. I passed out. I went to sleep, whatever you wanna call it. And I wake up about 4 o'clock in the afternoon with my now soon to be ex wife sitting on the corner of the bed looking at me with my 2 little boys, and she said, you know, we have a mortgage, and we have a lot of bills together, and I have to put up with this until we can find a roommate for this house.

But your boys don't have to grow up like this and they don't have to see this. I'm taking the boys. I'm putting them in my mother's. And when you get your stuff together, then maybe you can see them. There's no fight.

There's no big deal there. I just said okay. She was right. I shouldn't have been around my boys. They shouldn't have seen the things they were seeing, and I was going above and beyond what a bad father was to me.

And it broke my heart, and I made the decision right then and there like I always do when the chips are down, when the booze stops working, when the life stops working, I'm checking out. I'm done. I'm killing myself. I cannot live like this anymore. Once again, these bad things are happening to me.

I spent the day watching TV with my son. I picked up my stuff, put my clothes on, went to the bar to give alcohol a shot one more time. Closed the bar down at night, went home. My youngest son woke up as I walked in the house, and I got him a bottle, and I gave him a hug, a little kiss, told him I loved him. I laid him back to bed.

I then proceeded to grab a bottle of Fina Barbatal, mix it in with cottage cheese, pretty glamorous suicide attempt, I think, and try to kill myself. I'm washing it down with Robir schnapps. That's all we had left. It's not my favorite. And, you know, I grab a rifle, and I put a bullet in the chamber, and I try to shoot myself.

I'm feeling way too good to do that. I hop in the tub and think maybe if I go to sleep, I'll drown, but I gotta do something before this pheno kicks in because I am going down. I know I'm going down. I lay in that tub. I slice my arm open.

I'm bleeding all over the tub. The phenobarbital kicks in like I know it's gonna. Everything's right in the world. I don't know what all the suicide business is about. I'm going to bed.

I get up out of the tub. I don't dry off. Go lay down in bed, and I go to sleep. Now this next little part is all hearsay. It's what I was told.

I wasn't there. Medical records. I I was not coherent. My wife woke up. I was gurgling.

I was sobbing, breathing, and she called the sheriffs. The sheriffs come out. They pick me up. I'm nonresponsive, I think, is the word they use for it. They bring me down to Red Wing Medical Center.

They administer a shot of NARCANE, which, any of you have seen Pulp Fiction with a shot of adrenaline in the heart similar to that, bring me out of it. I come out of it kicking and fighting, apparently, hitting doctors and nurses and just I don't know. I wasn't there. They restrained me, and they start preparing my wife and my aunt for me to die, because they can't get my phenobarbital levels to go down. They're pumping charcoal into my stomach.

They got me on a ventilator so that I can breathe, and they don't know. They don't know if I'm gonna live. They don't know if I'm gonna be brain damaged. I mean, I'm brain damaged, but, you know, more so, I guess. And they transport me by helicopter, a helicopter ride I paid $8,000 for and don't remember, to Saint Mary's Medical Center down in Rochester.

I woke up out of the coma, like, 2, two and a half days later. And I'll tell you this to scare you. I know I cannot steal scare real alcoholics, but it scared me. I woke up medical restraints tied down with a tube running down my throat, and I could still, to this day, hear the sound of me screaming around that tube because I had no idea where I was. I had no idea what had happened.

I was terrified. Now after I come to a little bit, I start yelling and screaming. All this vile anger and pain and hurt starts flying out of my mouth with the people that I love the most, my family, my friends. 2 days ago, I'm dancing on a bar with a girl in one arm and a Budweiser in the other. I got a picture of that.

Now I'm laying in a hospital bed with tubes running in and out of me, possibly brain damaged, possibly dying. I got a picture of that too. The duality of alcoholism is astonishing to me because I was feeling alright on Friday night. Alcohol was working. Sunday morning, there was no escape there.

Now all that suicide stuff, that whole suicide attempt, that's not what makes me an alcoholic. That's just the drama that some of us have in our lives. What makes me an alcoholic is this. When that psychiatrist came in, sat down next to me, and asked me, do you think you have a problem with alcohol? I honestly, honestly said, no.

I just have a little situational depression. Okay? Now if these things would just sort themselves out, I'll be fine. Nothing to die over then. You know?

But I meant it. You know? It's it's funny to me now, but at the time, I was very serious. I was like, no. I'm not an alcoholic.

I just have a couple of problems. They didn't quite see my point of view. I'm not sure why, but they thought I might have a drinking problem. They decided to send me up to the Nuts Ward for a few day vacation, and I don't mind the Nuts Ward. The nut work to me is not a scary place.

I like free chocolate milk. I like free orange juice. You know, there's pretty crazy girls get cement, you know? So Something was different about this trip. Something was different about this.

By God's grace, I told him absolutely not. You're not giving me any psych meds. You are not giving me anything. And the reason why I say by God's grace is this, I know how to talk to psychiatrists. I know how to talk to people in the mental hospitals and the treatment centers.

And if I would have said, sure. Give me some meds. Just give me a couple of pills. They would have said, you have a nice day, mister Barnes, and come back for your checkup on Friday. And I would have hung myself or shot myself or drank myself to death.

By god's grace, that didn't happen and something inside me said absolutely not. And when I said absolutely not, they said, well, we're gonna file papers with the county. We're gonna commit you. You're going up in front of the judge. And I'm like, whatever.

You know? Okay. I was very laughing one second, crying the next, screaming. You know, I was absolutely nuts. I was messed up for about my 1st week of sobriety.

Phenobarb's always still detoxing in my liver, and it comes down to court date. And I'm gonna walk in there, and I'm gonna say a whole bunch of hip slicking cool stuff to this guy. I'm gonna tell him the terms of my surrender, if you will, and the undercover cop comes to pick me up. Now it's been worse than this before. My life has been more screwed up than this before.

I have been crazier than this before. But my moment of clarity, when all the lies that I've been telling myself and everyone around me failed to be acceptable to me anymore was when we get down and I got my stuff together and I'm gonna tell him and I'm gonna tell him and I'm gonna get what I want. I'm gonna talk my way out of this one more time, and he pulls out the Hannibal Lecter restraint belt, and I just start weeping. I did just tears start falling from my face because I'm going up in front of a judge and I haven't broken a law yet. I I I haven't done anything as far as criminal goes.

The lie is up. I'm nuts. I am absolutely insane. I am an alcoholic, and they're going to sentence me to a nut ward or treatment depending on how I behave. And it was it for me.

I put on my little Hannibal Lecter restraint belt, and they shoved my 6 foot 4 body inside of a box about that big and brought me to the courthouse. And after I got the Hannibal Lecter restraint belt off, and they put me in the handcuffs and walked me up like some sort of crazy person well, I guess I was a crazy person, but walked me into the walked me into the judge. And something happened, see, because I didn't fight anything. I said, yes, sir. It's a new concept to me.

He says, are you an alcoholic? Yes, sir. Do you need some help? Yeah. I do.

And he said, are you willing to go today? I said, yeah. Let's do this. I spent a couple hours with my aunt who was nice enough to drive me so I didn't have to ride in a van, and I smoked some cigarettes and, you know, we talked about stuff. And I walked into treatment down at Johnson Center in Saint Peter.

I've been in teaming before. I know the game. I know what you you know, you just walk in, you know, oh, I don't know if I don't wanna drink anymore. You know? And then you just kinda slowly get better over the next couple weeks and then you get out.

It's a pretty easy game. Anyone can figure it out. Ain't a big deal. The tree center center I was sent to didn't have a whole lot of fluffy, wonderful things to do. We didn't get to go on nature hikes.

We didn't get to go play all sorts of fun games activities and crafts. We had group almost all day long. Handed you a big book, said you're gonna need to return that. We're a state facility. We don't have money to give them out.

Okay. That's great. I sat in my room most nights reading through that big book. I should say say that I called my old sponsor from when I was 17 and I said, where do I go? Where do I go from here?

Where do I start again? If I knew anything about AA, I probably wouldn't be in here. And he said, read the doctor's opinion, and I started there. And the guy very casually led me through the steps. Read the book.

Read this. Do you have any questions? And I sat in my room with my big book of Alcoholics Anonymous going through the steps the way that they're outlined to me in that book and calling him to make sure that I wasn't screwing it up. Something changed. It was for real this time.

I could start to sense that something was going on that was amazing. I did my 4th step in there. I did my 5th step in there. But more importantly, when that man picked me up, put the restraint belt on me, the game was up. The big book says if when you honestly want to, you find you cannot stop drinking, or if once you start you have little control over the amount you take, you're probably an alcoholic.

I could look back in my life and go, yeah. That's me. Real quick, a time when I honestly wanted to stop drinking was when my first son was born. I held that baby boy in my arms, and I meant with everything inside my body that you're not gonna grow up the way I did. That I'm not going to be the type of father that my father was.

I'm gonna stop drinking. I'm gonna stop going out. I'm gonna stop all this, and I meant it with everything in me. In a week, I was drinking, celebrating the birth of my first child. And by the end of the month, I was never home, drunk all the time.

I missed pretty much the 1st year of my kid's life as a result of my drinking, but things have changed because now I had to live with the guilt and shame of making that promise and breaking it. So I can't even drink at my own house anymore. I gotta leave all the time to drink, and I'm gone all the time to drink. Little control over the amount you take. I'm an up and coming supervisor in a company, about to be the youngest supervisor about secured, and the Christmas party's coming up.

Oh, yeah. So I'm gonna have a couple of drinks. Right? Not a non alcoholic couple of drinks, 2, but a real alcoholic couple of drinks, you know, 6 or 7. I'm I'm just gonna take it easy tonight.

That's not what happened. I ended up going through a couple $100 worth of booze. That's some of them I gave to other people, I imagine. But by the end of the night, I'm just drunk enough to just about run the president of the company over walking. Sorry.

Not driving. As I'm on my way to the bathroom to puke all over myself, all over my clothes, all over my hands, so that I can go out, order another drink I mean, I don't wanna not have anything to puke up while I'm curled up in the fetal position outside of the place in the middle of January wearing a Glad bag like a poncho. I gotta have something in there for that, you know, and save some puke. You know? And as I lay there in that bag, and the president walks by, and the owner walks by, and the foremans walk by, and the plant manager walks by with their families saying, have a good night, Dustin.

It's funny now. It wasn't a whole lot of fun back then, you know. I didn't mean for that to happen. I was gonna have a couple of drinks, schmooze with the big guys, secure my place in the company, we're gonna be good. I can buy a new truck.

You know? It it just lost it. Dropped the ball. Look what happened to me. I did end up making I So my first step comes to life for me as I'm sitting there doing some inventory in this treatment center.

My second and third step happened in an afternoon with a man who's paid to be there, which is a huge deal for me. Like, if you're paid to be a psychiatrist, I don't wanna talk to you. You know? This chaplain sits me down, and I can't bring to you guys with enough force to understand the moment that I first came to believe that there was a God. There's no way I could duplicate that from a podium.

But I remember a couple of things that he said, and one of them was that you don't have to live the way your parents made you feel. And, you know, I was explaining him how if there was a God, I couldn't believe in it because I was mad at God. I hated God. I was hurt by God, and if there was one, there's no way he would take me under his wing being as I felt that way about him. And he said, I can understand why you're mad at God from you telling me what's going on in your life and the decisions you've made and the things that have happened to you.

If I can understand it, don't you think that maybe God can? How big is your God? Your God's about this small. If I can understand, God can. And something just snapped to me.

Something changed right then and there. It wasn't a white light. It was was some crusty old guy in a mister Rogers sweater, but it was my first real spiritual awakening and I made a decision right then and there to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand it. Well, I'm not very bright when it comes to knowing what I'm supposed to do if you couldn't tell from my story so far. So I go back to this book that says, you've done your 3rd step.

Start your 4th. We're off on a course of vigorous action. Let's do this. Being as I have nothing better to do, I mean, I don't know anything else to do. Yeah.

Sure. God's here. What now? Do this. And that's what I I did.

I'm not gonna sit here and outline the 4th step for you, but I'm gonna talk about a couple things that really hit me in the chest. One of them was this. See, I had tried to do a 4th step step before after about 6 months of sobriety when I was in the fellowship. And by the time I had 6 months, I could see that a lot of my resentments were kinda childish. You guys have any childish resentments?

I had a few. Some of them are a little bit no. How would you say, weak? Like, there's no real reason for it, but I was very angry, so I left them off there. If they're goofy, if they're if there's no real reason for it, I'm not putting out my force that way.

Come on. We gotta get down to the real resentments here. And I read the line that said fancied or real. Fancy or real. So I talked to my sponsor.

He said, yeah. Doesn't matter how stupid they are. Write them down. What's it gonna hurt? So I did.

I wrote them down. Another thing was I was insanely resentful at God. He said, you're gonna have to write that down. But what God will know that I'm angry at him. You know?

Just insane thinking, but but he told me it doesn't matter. Write it down. So I did. I did. 4th column.

I had different opinions on this whole deal. It was made very apparent to me that it's not what my part is. Because if I got a part, you got a part. Right? We have a problem.

What's your part in it? Okay. I see that. This is what you did to me. I don't have a part in it.

It's where am I to blame? What were my mistakes in that relationship? Where have I failed in this relationship? And that's what I did. I wrote that stuff down.

I go in to take a 5th step, and I don't want to because I'm in a paid treatment center place. Well, I don't wanna take it in here. It won't be very spiritual because this guy is being paid to listen to it. But then I had a thought. This guy is the chaplain for the Saint Peter Regional Treatment Center, where he gets to listen to fist steps of mentally ill and dangerous and the sex offenders.

There's nothing on my list that he hasn't heard or heard, like, 10 times worse. And I'm like, sure. I'll give it a shot. You know? And I do that, and I go back to my room, and I do what the big book asked me to do.

I sit quietly looking at what I've done prior to this. Am I good to go? Do I have a foundation? I did. I started making a list.

Took most people from my age step, and and was looking at how am I gonna take care of this. I get out of treatment with some amazing, absolutely wonderful things happened in treatment. Wonderful. Had a relationship with my mother for the first time in years. Start to actually see who I am and how I walk in this world, And I get out.

Get out of treatment, and I go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And this wonderful wonderful thing that has happened in my life, and I just wanna talk about it. I wanna go to a meeting of AA. We didn't have a whole lot of speakers. We didn't have real AA meetings in there.

And I get out, and I feel like I'm lost. I really honestly do. I I don't even know where I'm at. I don't hear about this stuff that I had just done. I come to Cambridge, moving up here.

I meet a guy from the moment we met, sitting in a group. There's 65 people in there. We happen to get in the same group together, and we're talking about the 4th step. And we're both so excited afterwards that we found somebody that is actually talking about the 4th step out of the book that we're jumping down like a bunch of little kids after the meeting, talking and chatting, and we get each other's numbers, and we're gonna go on from here. That's my that's the sponsor that I have today.

His name is Paul g, and any of you that were here on Tuesday, he was your speaker. And we continue on with this work. Now I have at this time about 60 days of sobriety. Right? And I got a head full of treatment AA.

I got a head full of middle of the road solution because that's what I was doing before when I was sober in AA, so that's gotta work. Right? I got drunk. People get drunk, leave the treatment center all the time. This man started asking me to do some things that, you know, I wasn't I kinda wanted to just walk my amends out, you know, make living amends to the people in my life.

And he said, absolutely not. You must face it. Why do I have to face you know, I could just walk it out. Right? No.

It says we must take care of this. We must, or we'll drink. Remember, we agreed at the beginning that we would go to any length. We started working together. I wrote my list.

I brought my list to him. With the ones that were pretty easy, cut and dry, I took it upon myself to make my own ends. And basically, if it was something that I just did to you, he outlined it to me like this, I want you to know that when I did this, that that was wrong of me. I don't expect you to forgive me, but I want you to know that I'm very sorry. And if there's anything I can do to make things right, I want you to let me know, and I'll do my best to do that.