The topic of sponsorship at the Blackstone Retreat in Blackstone, VA

And now it is my pleasure and privilege and honor to introduce Don Peay from Aurora, Colorado. Just give me a minute. My name is Donald. I am an alcoholic. Donald.

And I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. My, home group is simply known as an AA group. We, well, we were trying to name it when we were going through the traditions, and the long form of the tradition says that any 2 or more alcoholics gathered for sobriety may call themselves NAA Group. So our central office told us we couldn't register under that name, and we reminded them they work for us, not the other way around. We meet at the Exempla St.

Joseph Hospital in the Alpine Room or the Aspen Room at 6 o'clock every Friday morning. We don't have a lot of deadweight at our meeting. We don't want a lot of deadweight at our meeting. Our format is very simple. We talk about a step, a tradition, or a concept back to back, and it may take one meeting or it may take weeks.

We really don't care. Following that little gathering oh, by the way, our second meeting of the month belongs to our GSR and our central office rep. We are part of Alcoholics Anonymous, and our business meeting is one of our regular meetings. You can bring new people there. If we're talking about the tense concept, we won't hurt them.

They don't hear anything anyway. Following that gathering, we all go into the cafeteria and have breakfast together where the real meeting takes place. I hate to admit it to you, but in any formal meeting, I'm only partly listening. Part of my mind is working out what I'm gonna say when it's my turn. And I wish it weren't so, but it is so.

But over breakfast, we just chitchat. We have a favorite. We've been 12 stepping for about a year and a half now. Little Mexican fellow that has been in an accident, has some brain damage and some other things, and he has to show up at the hospital regularly for therapy. Well, we know who he is.

All you gotta do is look in his eyes. You know why he had that accident. And so we started quietly 12 stepping him. Sure enough, he was drunk. He still, after a year and a half, has not come over and sat with us at the table, but he likes to have us come and visit with him 2 or 3 at a time.

And he'll stop and say goodbye. But of more importance, people watch us. You know? People don't hear much what we say, but they watch us. Whether you like it or not, anytime you are identified as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, you are Alcoholics Anonymous to whoever's watching.

About 6 months ago, our little fella had a grand mal seizure right there in the cafeteria right over on his head. Blood everywhere. You know, head head wounds aren't really bad, but they sure look ugly. And I've never seen such response from a hospital staff. Everybody from the administrator to the blue cart people were just there.

We are reasonably saying our group, and though we love this guy, we knew don't try to help. We're in a hospital for God's sake. Okay. Stand back and wait and let the experts do it. And after he'd been cared for, 3 of the nurses came over to make sure we were okay.

They watch us, you know. Their neighbors watch us. My next door neighbor. Well, yeah, I'm from the old time AA. In addition to meetings out here, we have a meeting in our home every Wednesday night, a little potluck in a meeting because we used to meet at homes, and, we still do.

We're having a meeting one summer. Good one. There were 40, 50 people showed up. The next day, my neighbor's kid came over. He said, mister Prich, you seem to know something about alcoholism.

I have some friends who are in trouble. So this is the same kid that, went out in my backyard one day to pull some weeds and some of them were weeds. And I quit growing that stuff years ago, so so I just pulled them up. We had a big black lab at the top. I just pulled them up.

You know? They're just weeds. Few days later, he approached me and said, mister Prince, if I came into your yard, would your dog bite me? See, I know he's thinking, I gotta replant that stuff, and I don't want it in my backyard. So I said, no, Chris.

He he wouldn't bite you. I think what he'd probably do is eat you and bury your bones under the apple tree. They watch us. You know? Everybody's been double thanked, but we missed 1 guy.

I need to thank Reid. I come to these things to learn. He very kindly taught me how I identify the solid fork from the regular fork. I've I've been years waiting for someone to understand that I don't know the difference. In fact, I don't really care, but it was nice of you anyway.

I've been profoundly moved by this weekend. If this is your first one, you have been privileged by the program, not just the speakers, the workshops, and the speakers, and the spirit of this gathering. I have been continuously sober since December 26, 1967, and I'm profoundly grateful for that. It's due to the power of God and because everything I was asked to do here in AA was the truth and it worked. I talked about my sobriety date because it's time we dispel a rumor that crept in and became kind of a myth in Alcoholics Anonymous.

For you new folks, relapse is not a necessary part of recovery. It does occur, and it will continue to occur. One of the facts of life is that alcoholics drink alcohol, but it need not happen. If you're alcoholic, you don't ever have to drink again ever. And if it weren't for that kind of promises, I would not be here.

I must also tell you aid did not get me sober, and aid does not keep me sober. God got me sober. God keeps me sober. AA keeps reminding me of that. I did not know I was alcoholic when I got here.

I was certified by one government agency as a sociopath type 2. My federal parole officer said I was a psychopath. The doctor said I was a manic depressive drug addict. So I was hiding my alcoholism behind some real high drama. You can get past 1 or 2 of them, but not all of them.

Madly depressing is one of my better games. And please understand, I'm not demeaning that. My son is a truly diagnosed treatable manic depressive. But for me, it was defense. When people start getting too close, the easiest way to hold them back is just throw a few mood swings.

They tend to leave you alone. You have to get really good at it, and I was. If you do it too much, they put you away somewhere. And if you don't do it but just a little bit, you become the entertainment at the party, and I'm trying to avoid crowds anyway. So in my alcoholism, I became a surprise.

Now surprises are supposed to come in packages with ribbons on them. I became a surprise. You never knew for sure when I showed up who the hell was that masked man. And that caused grave, grave damage to my family and the people who loved me most. I come from a functional home.

I'm sorry, but I do. If I were to be asked today to write down the qualities of the home I wish I'd have been raised in, that is the home I was raised in. My parents were married, 66 years when dad left, and I can describe functional by my father's death. Having made amends to him, we had a 27 year relationship. Father and son, man to man, Nothing undone.

Nothing unsaid. So I know that about 6 months before he died, he wanted to leave this planet. He was tired. He had dry gangrene in one leg, and he was losing his memory. And for my dad, that was bad news.

My dad was an unmeasured genius. Truly, they had at the time of his death, they didn't have a test that marked where he was, but he never lost his sense of humor. He told me right near the end, he said, you know, Don, there's a great benefit to this memory loss deal. I only have to rent one movie for the rest of my life. They celebrated their 66 wedding anniversary on a Saturday.

On Tuesday, dad went into a coma and a few days later left the planet. Now the opportunity to have rebuilt a relationship with him was brought to my attention. My function for the rest of my life, from the day I got sober, is to fit myself to be a maximum service to god and those about me. There was no grieving for my dad. It was a good death.

It was done. He was ready to go, and we were all current, if you will. What it did was make me available to the nieces and the nephews and the grandchildren who didn't know what was going on. I could walk them over to him and say talk to him. He can't talk back to you, but if you have anything to say, get it said.

Do it. He stayed around for that party. That's why he stayed because he knew how important that was to my mother. That's functional. My brother is a professor of music, at the University of Colorado.

Pardon me. I'm going through some physical things that just make me whine like a baby. Life touches me right at the morning. Now he and I grew up in the same house. He lived in the next room over right down the hall.

We petted the same dog and everything. And when he was 19, he was writing music with Stan Kenton. When I was 19, I was my 1st federal penitentiary in Tokyo, Japan. Somehow, the contrast does not escape me. My brother's a marvel.

They take him to Russia and the Scandinavian countries every summer to teach. He's probably the world's foremost synthesizer musician. Quite a guy. Let me tell you what he and I have together. We made amends after it took 22 years to do it, by the way.

He couldn't trust me. For 22 years, he could not trust me. So when you get around to trying to clean it up, remember the damage we do to people sometimes lasts a long, long time, and they watch us. My words mean nothing. It's my actions.

When we finally got it done, one of the things my brother gave me is a gift. He said, I've discovered you and I are doing the same thing with my music. I'm trying to reach people deep deep in their souls so they can change if they need to and have a new experience with life. He said, I watch it. You do the same thing.

So now use a trombone, you use your mouth. You don't wanna miss that. That's what sobriety is about. Sobriety is so far beyond not drinking. It just irritates the hell out of me in today's day.

We think not drinking is more important than recovery from alcoholism. Tell you new people something, if you recover from alcoholism, you won't drink. Now it's a pretty good idea to try to stop drinking for a few days before you get recovered, but don't settle for sobriety. That is the worst possible state an alcoholic can be in is sober. The main reason I drank is because I can't stand being sober.

But meaningful sobriety, now that's that's worth having. Part of my emotional difficulties in life is that I am a passionate man, and I think life means something. It just doesn't pass by. I wanna get in the heart of it, and it means it's important. My goodness.

But I was a sprinter in the game of life and not a long distance runner. When we played the football, I was a fairly good athlete. I was quarterback at one time, and I'll never forget the day I made a quarterback sneak and it worked. And there's nothing between me and the goal post but air. My emotional state was, what the hell just happened?

And so I slowed down, turned around, and see what just happened. They creamed me. I was a Golden Gloves boxer when I was younger. I trained with Tommy Golden in Denver. Made it all the way to the finals.

It was a little 3 round finals. In 2 rounds, I had the thing. It was mine. The problem was I knew it, so I relaxed. He had a motivation I didn't know about.

He had 2 brothers up in the stands who had told him, if you lose this one, you got 2 more coming as soon as you get home. He beat the hell out of me in that 3rd round because I was a sprinter, not a long distance runner. I play trumpet, trombone, harmonicas. Right now, all I'm playing is the, lap dulcimer, and you're not gonna hear that. It's too pretty for you.

It's one of the examples of the lessons I've learned about love for my wife. We were in Silver City, Arkansas, and young Tom Coburn was playing Scotland the Brave on the 120 string hammered dulcimer. And, I knew before I die, I must be able to play just once, Scotland the brave on a dulcimer. My wife who is sane knows that I will probably not get around to learning how to hit a 120 strings, so she bought me a little 4 string lap dulcimer because she loves me. And I play Scott and the Brave.

Tom Ivester told me if I ever play it again in his presence, he'll break it. I think it's pretty. This is a sponsorship conference, and I hate definitions because they lock things in. But descriptions are good. I wanna do something for you new people.

This is not about me. Please understand this. 1 person sponsors another and they sponsor another and the circle goes out. And as a result of that, I have a family. AA is a big family, but it's in all families.

There are immediate family and there's kissing cousins. And I love my kissing cousins for a little while, but I need to be around my immediate family. They are all over the world. For you new people, Will those of you who are in my immediate family? You don't wanna miss that.

Several of these people are insane. 2 of them are stark raving mad. When there's nothing good on television, I just think of the last time I was with Brendan. When I got here, I didn't have a name. I was 38984.

No one would talk to me, rightly so. My alcoholism has taken me some strange places, and I almost hate to talk about some of them because somehow the sicker you are, the higher your status is here. And the worst places you've been, the better you are. But Christmas week of 1967 was a bitch for me. I was on federal parole for a little mistake I had made in 1966.

I got in with bad company. And, well, we were my job was to smuggle marijuana from Juarez to Albuquerque. Not a bad job, a little tense at times, but paid well. But the fellow who hired me to do one of those jobs turned around and turned us all in so he wouldn't have to go to prison. He made my inventory, by the way.

So I was on federal parole. I have 2 little boys whose mother had abandoned ship years before. She also is alcoholic. So I was a single parent, homeless, for about four and a half years, and that was before it became fashionable to be that. It, we finally had to land, and the boys and I lived in a basement apartment between an old lady who raised cats.

I was down to about a £133. I am not a drug addict, but I'd come from the generation where I used a lot of speed. It made it possible to drink longer and better, and it made it possible to get the hell out of town faster, and it quieted the imperious urge. So I'm gonna talk a little about that, but, honestly, I'm not a drug addict. I had to find out.

If you think you are, please find that out. Just because you use drugs doesn't make you a drug addict, and just because you drank doesn't make you an alcoholic. You need to find out what the problem really is so you can take care of it. Anyway, I wanna tell you about that week so I can get to what I came here for. I think Sean was about 5, 5a half, and Terry was around 8.

I couldn't work. I was on federal parole. We were on ADC and was running near the end of the road. I have come to bottom many, many times. Bottom for me is easily describable.

Bottom is any morning I wake up and understand clearly whatever I have in mind for my life isn't going to happen. And so I pick up a new set of dreams, new girl, new car, new town, new job, we start all over again. And because I'm a sprinter, that falls apart and I hit bottom again. Well, this this was near the end of the last bottom for me. We didn't have a Christmas tree because the ADC check hadn't gotten there yet, and I was too tired to go out and steal anything.

I just man, was I tired. But when I get in distress, I walk. I'm a traveler. So the boys and I took a walk, and we found a dollar in the snow. And with that dollar, we went to the the Christmas tree lot couple blocks away and got the biggest tree on the lot for a dollar.

And I'm thinking, I still got it. When I look back over there, what I realized is I had encountered genuine kindness. This guy saw this 133 pound Auschwitz survivor with these 2 little boys who had nothing. He'd had given me the tree, but he let me save face by paying him the dollar. So he took it home, and I keep the memory clear because we had a 9 foot tree and a 7 foot ceiling, and I didn't have the wit to cut the top off.

And we dressed it with garbage and junk and stuff. And we didn't have any presents either, so we took another walk. And we got to the, public merchandise, Martin Denver, and that very kind man gave me a pair of cowboy boots and a little cowboy shirt. Uh-oh. Here he comes.

Oh, thank you. I'm having some minor medical problems, and it sometimes drives me out. I go, oh, that's good. That's one of yours. He saved my life more than was.

So when the boys each had a present, They wrapped up everything in the house for me that would fit into blue paper towel and put under the tree, and I started dying. I'm not here today because of the truth. I'm here today because I finally ran out of lies. My lie was we're okay. The boys and I are intact.

We're a little family. We have a place to stay and food, and and that was a lie. We were not an intact family. There were 2 little boys living with a madman, and we had nothing. We went down to my folks' house on Christmas Day, and I've told you my family is the kind of family that no matter what you've done, you can always go home.

May smack you alongside the head, but you go to bed. My dad managed to sit at the door and he said, Don, I'm sorry, but your mother said I can't let you in here anymore. She can't stand watching you die. And my lie was, leave me the hell alone. I'm not hurting anybody but me.

And by some kind of grace, I got to see who I was really hurting. Everybody, particularly the people I love the most. Then dad snuck us into the basement, and my last lie died. Nobody loves us. Nobody cares.

He did. He jeopardized the peace of his own home that day by sneaking us in. So I went home that day, Christmas day in 1967 with no lies left, a heart full of self pity, and moved from the lies into the the truth. And I'm gotta tell you, it's sad as hell, but I have finally understood I have become completely useless. There was no reason for me to be on the planet.

I couldn't find 1. Kids would be better off, folks would be better off, and it was the truth. Everybody would be better off. I think uselessness is the absolute rock bottom of all human pain. At the point of uselessness, you either surrender or die.

And I had nothing to surrender to, so I took a 2 months supply of amphetamines and shot them up my arm and laid down and died. I drank everything in the house and died. And I really think I died. I haven't had a drink since. Woke up in the morning, didn't feel too good.

Well, hell, a police were at the door, and I knew I wasn't dead. What a I hope if you try it, you make it. There's nothing more disappointing than waking up after you've killed yourself. God. But I was in a wondrous state.

I was now ready for you. I'm a complete failure at living and a complete failure at dying. I don't have any options left. Without knowing it, I had become willing to go anywhere anyone said and do anything anyone said if it meant I didn't have to be that creature anymore. That's all I came here with.

It was a willingness to change totally. And I didn't care what I changed into, just whatever. Anyway, I laid in jail for 5 and a half months and healed up. What they had was 9 charges. First one called for 3 years to lie from the penitentiary, and the DA promised me he'd bring the others one at a time if I beat that, but I was through.

I really didn't care. I know I was through. We came to trial, and they took me in a room with my attorney and said, we've been talking to the federal people because they really are the ones who still own me. I owe them 5 more years. We've all concluded you're really sick.

I knew that. I said, here's the deal. If you'll plead guilty to a reduced charge we have ready, we can give you 1 and a half to 3, and we won't have to have this big trial. We'll give you 1 and a half to 3 and suspend it and give you back to the feds, and they've already agreed to take you to Fort Worth, Texas to the mental hospital. And that's what's wrong with you.

I'm an alcoholic, not an idiot. I signed right there. I signed up for Federal Mental Hospital. And 5 days later, I was in the fish tank of the Colorado State Penitentiary. I can't even get locked up in the right place.

And I believe that's by the grace of God and because I had done the one thing that's required here, surrendered. Totally. No reservations. Didn't even know I'd done it. I believe I came to you spiritually awake.

I didn't know that. I came to you pretty fragile, but spiritually awakened people are pretty fragile. So when you're working with people and they awaken, be kind, be gentle. They're really fragile. They're just been reborn.

They don't know what the hell is going on. And since you don't either, be kind. Okay. I don't believe for a second that God will mess your life up just to make mine better. I believe God uses whatever is at hand.

And in that knowing of what I really needed, which was Alcoholics Anonymous because I'm an alcoholic, If you'd have put me in that hospital, I'd have been out in 6 months. That's one of the reasons I signed the paper. I know how to play hospital game, mental health game. I woke up in the padded cell of the Boulder County Jail 1 morning. Couldn't remember how the hell I'd gotten there, and neither could anybody else.

Scared me a little bit. The parole officer was put in a position where he had 3 choices. Send me back to prison, send me to some sort of mental hospital, or get me outpatient treatment. Well, I voted for outpatient, of course. And I knew I was gonna have to take a battery of tests.

I know how to play that game. I went down honestly, I went to the library and studied the Rorschach because I knew that was gonna be one of the big ones, the inkblot test. They evaluate you gotta be sick enough to need help, but not so sick that they need to lock you up. I passed it. I got my own psychiatrist.

Lovely man. 3 weeks after we started meeting, he started smoking marijuana with me. Now I'm not saying I turned him on. He was ready. But the game is, if you can't beat them, get them to join you.

Anyway, I was brought to you in the 3rd week in the fish tank. Fish tank, for those of you who haven't been there, is a 1 month orientation where you learn how to live in the your new community. They test you and thumpy and bump you and find out where you're gonna go to work and kinda teach you who the players are and who not play with and what not to do. In the 3rd week, I can still hear it. The guard called out to us.

You people will come down, and you will listen. Well, I didn't have anything else to do. So I went down, and I did the first thing that I had ever done right. I listened. Just listen.

They had 3 guys, ugly, convex with numbers on it. Well, 2 of them were ugly. Bruce was really kinda cute, but well, he was. One of the ugly ones got up. Not short, but I don't like Chuck.

Short. My name's Doc. I'm an alcoholic, and that means that I'm powerless over alcohol and drugs and drugs and all the other circumstances in my life. And my life has become unmanageable. And if any of you smart bachelors think you can still manage your lives, look at the reward the state just gave you for the nifty job you've been doing.

Because I was listening, I heard him. So your very best thinking got you the penitentiary. You're not doing too good, are you? Well, no. That's where I am.

Then he did what he does if it's working right. He went one step past that. It isn't what happened, what I was like. He said, but we can show you a new way of thinking. We can show you how to learn to live a way of life that will make sense to you, and that was a new idea to me.

I've been trying to live my life so it made sense to you, and my life didn't make sense to anybody. My life makes a lot of sense to me today. It still doesn't make a lot of sense to other people, but I don't care. When you start buying my groceries, you can tell me how to live. Makes sense to my wife.

We've been married 27 and a half years now. We haven't had a fight yet. That's true. We don't always agree. But why would I wanna fight with the person I love the most and besides, she's right most of the time anyway?

Let me give you guys I'm I'm terrible sponsor when it comes to personal relationships because I've never figured out how to have a successful sick relationship, so I'm no good to you. But I can tell you how to have a successful marriage. How many of you have seen the princess bride? Okay. That's my relationship with God, and all my others are based on that.

Remember, the little farm boy is completely dottie over the little girl, and she takes advantage of that. Oh, farm boy, fetch me that bucket as you wish. Farm boy, do this as you wish. As you wish is the relationship with God, so be careful what you pray for. If I ask that's what God says as you wish.

I must also reciprocate whatever he asks as you wish. So you want a successful marriage? Just say as you wish. Now my wife tells me that there are inflection differences she's been picked up over Rather than fight, if I think there's something not quite right that she said, as you wish. But that works just as well.

Our 12 step work is based on that. You know? We are to find out, first of all, if the people want to recover. Okay. You wanna quit drinking?

Are you wanting to go to analytics to do so? Would you like to work with me? As you wish. If you don't wanna get sober, have a good time. If you do, whatever we need to do, as you wish.

If you wanna stop right in the middle, as you wish, you'll be back. The best friend we of Alcoholics Anonymous have is alcohol. It brings more people to us than anything else. Good friend. Oh, yeah.

Don't hate it. Somebody wants to drink, buy them 1. 1, then I gotta go. I, before we were a lot, one of the things that I wanna share with you, again, is in developing my relationship with God, because that whole idea is beyond my capacity. I have to look at the people involved.

Now the 3 people that helped me most, we had to go through a 12 step study school before we were allowed to go to the AA meeting. The regular meeting happened on Friday night, and they let real people in from the outside. It was a 2 and a half hour meeting where we did half of it, had coffee and cake and cookies, and then they did half of it. We weren't allowed to go to that for 5 weeks. Every Saturday and every Sunday afternoon, we gave up our yard privileges, our movies, everything, and went to what they called the school.

3 or 4 hours, and all it was was they took the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous and read it out loud to us, shared their experience with it and of it, and gave us the assignments that come out of there, ask us those questions. First thing they said when I got in there, by the way, because Jim and I decided, let's go. Those same 3 guys were there. And Bruce said, now you new guys for the next 5 weeks have nothing to say. If you knew anything at all, you wouldn't be here.

So during that time, we were not allowed to talk even unless we had a question. Outside of that particular gathering, we talked all the time to them and to us. Most of us work in the dish rooms, so we'd and then at night, Bruce or Roy or Phil would come by and visit with us. Now my experience is a little different at the beginning. I couldn't call my sponsor when I needed him.

He didn't have a phone, neither did I. He lived on the other tier. I couldn't get to a meeting when I needed 1. We had 1. So my experience has been it had to go in here first.

He was visiting me on one of those times. I'm locked down and he's on the chair visiting with me when it hit me. He's getting out of his cell anytime he wants. I want what he has. This is a man doing a natural life sentence for a double murder he committed one day in an alcoholic outrage in a stick up, and he was free.

That's what I wanted, to be free. And one of our first prayers is relieve me of bondage of self. Set me free from the bondage of self. Why don't you have a good trip? Talk to boy everything he knows.

He knows I waited till he got out of the room before he said that. And they showed us precisely what they had. They could describe it, and they could tell us precisely how they got it. And all I had to do was what they did. I learned about alcoholism.

I was in my first federal penitentiary at 19 because of alcoholism, not because of gangsterism. When I drink alcohol, I get lost and I can't find my way home. That happened to you? And when you're in the navy, that's a felony. And I was.

I'd get a 24 hour liberty and be back in 26 or 28, get a captain's mask, and we'd go to sea, and that's all there was to that. The last time I did that, I had a 24 hour liberty in Long Beach, California. And 23 days later, when I get back to the ship, it was gone. It was going to a war zone and I was in deep, deep trouble. And in the doctor's opinion in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, he talks about working with men who had a business deal or a personal deal would be settled favorably to them on a certain date.

But they took a drink a day or so before, and they missed their appointment. And I began to see, oh, yeah. I took a drink in Long Beach. It's the first time I'd ever linked these consequences with a drink. See, these consequences do not define alcoholism.

That drink does. I got to sponsor a psychiatrist once. I love that. He was smarter than anybody. He was the founding psychiatrist, one of the finest alcohol and drug treatment programs in the world.

He just couldn't stay sober. And I like working with new people because you teach me effective prayer. Oh, god. Oh, god. What am I gonna say to this one?

And I'm reading the doctor's opinion to him because I understand as smart as he is, the main problem most alcoholics has is they can't read. They either read above the line or below the line. The kids can't seem to get the line, or they interpret what they read. I know. I do that.

I don't know how many hours I've spent in AA meetings deciding what what they really mean by that. Words like immediately. Well, it means immediately. That's what it means, but we'll discuss it. York Street midnight meeting.

Over and over and over again, we talked about any lengths. What does any lengths mean? And we talk about that. It means any lengths. Oh my.

And I'm reading the doctor's opinion to him, and I'm watching it go on his head and get lost among everything he knows about alcoholism. And I'm praying, what can I say? This even simpler than this. I heard this come out of my mouth. I said, Don, what happens to you after the first drink?

Well, he says around the 4th or 5th or 6th drink, I tend to forget where I'm supposed to be next and what I'm doing, and I end up getting drunk. I said, well, what happens to you after the first drink? Or on the 4th or 5th or 6th drink, what happens to me after the first drink is the second drink. And if you're new, that's all you need to know about alcoholism. If that happens to you, don't go anywhere.

What happens to me after the first drink is the second drink. And it may not be this afternoon, but it will be there, and that leads then to the spree and the consequences. And I can hide behind all the drama. It's that first drink that starts it all. I have a condition of my body, which for some reason, compels me to have another drink after I take one.

And I don't have any choice in the matter. I can't stop it from then on. It has to run its cycle. And I've got an even worse problem. Time.

We didn't get sick because we drank too much. It was bad chili and on and on and on and on. So I've got a body that condemns me to die if I drink and a mind that condemns me to drink. Against my own will, I can give you a hundred reasons why I drank and every one of them is valid, but the main reason I drank was no reason at all. No reason at all.

And that problem rests in my mind, and I can't solve the problem with the problem. Thank god mine was destroyed when I got here. After I learned about alcoholism, Bruce said, now we're going to assume that you went insane about 2 seconds after birth so that we don't have to track anything. Finally me. He said, we don't even think the truth is gonna work for you.

You take the truth into your head and your ego catches it and says something like, I can use that later. And so by the time I do use, there's not the truth anymore. It's my warped version of it. He said, we suggest you forget everything you think you know about anything, particularly about God. And I rebelled.

I said, come on. Surely, I've learned some truth. He says, it's doubtful, but it is possible. And granting that it is possible, here's the deal. Anything that's really true will still be true when we're all through, and the rest of it's garbage.

Just drop it. And by some form of grace, I was able to do that. To this day, if I'm doing battle with you, please understand it's my opinion, which means it's automatically warped. Even if it's the truth, it's warped. If I have to convince you of something, I'm in trouble because I will not listen to you.

And if I don't listen to you, I won't know what you need. And as a sponsor, I need to know what you need, not what I think you need. So when we both get lost, neither one of us know, we just open the big book and read it out loud, and suddenly we find out what we need. I came to believe in the power of God, and I came to believe that this could work for me by watching 3 absolute total failures who had been changed. Bruce was a killer who couldn't kill anymore.

Couldn't. He's a different person. The guy telling me the story could not have committed the act he was telling me about. And I asked him about it. He said, that's right.

I've been changed. God changed me. Ron Nichols, god love him. He was a stick up man. Not a very good one, obviously, but a stick up man.

And he didn't do it for the money. Roy liked going to supermarkets and going from station to station to station. He liked the adrenaline rush he got knowing every second you're there, you're closer to getting busted. What he really liked was the look on your face when he put a gun to your head and took your stuff. I heard that.

I smuggled a load of marijuana across the border one time. I took I'm trying to get my life back together at my dad's house when Albert called me from Albuquerque and said, we got a problem. I got these 2 old kids Trying to get my life back together. Albert says, we got a load as far as whereas, and our driver got arrested, and we need a driver. You want the job?

Well, I drive. I'm trying to get my life back in order. So I said, of course. Did the deal. And I didn't do it for money.

I did it for prestige. I was the only one in the United States they could think of to call to go into old Mexico and saved the day. You think your ego won't get you in trouble? Man. So that put me in a federal penitentiary because Albert's a snake.

Bit me. This has to be real, and I needed sanity and insanity to be real for me. I've been studying it for years and playing it for years. And in the book Alcoholics Anonymous and the story of Jim the car salesman, I found a working description of my kind of insanity. Read the story.

I don't have time to tell it to you. It's a one I love to tell it. The upshot of it is Jim was here in a a 6 times, kept drinking. Last time he drank, Nearly killed him. Bill says that what he did was insane.

So how how can anything be less than insane? Insanity is described there as lack of proportion and of the ability to think straight and that's the kind of insanity I have. I have no proportion in my life. If one works, take 10. Fear is for sissies.

Pay 50¢ and get on a roller coaster and get scared. I like raw terror, man. That's good stuff. That'll get you out of bed, make you feel useful. I don't know much about anger.

I know about calm, and I know about killer rage. And I go from 1 to the other just like that. K. Over really important stuff, Like getting cut off on the freeway or Yeah. Dinner wasn't hot, break something.

Yeah. No proportion. And I can't think straight. I do not see what this action will cause later. I'm warped.

I'm rubber minded. I'm self centered. It's all about me. How can I think straight? It goes out and comes right back.

It's a loop. I've gotta get over that. To restore me to sanity, was important. Now these 3 guys, please understand. The reason I was listening to them is they took me as I was where I was.

No name, living in a cage, which was appropriate, and they accepted me as it was where I was. I didn't have to clean up for them. And they kept talking about this God. And I got thinking one day, my experience was if they can take me as I am, as flawed as they are, maybe this god that they're talking about can too. They don't open that door.

We got to the 3rd step, and I had a real dilemma. I have never been afraid of the unknown. I love the unknown. It's where all the action is. K?

I get bored with the regular stuff. What I'm afraid of is always what I think is going to happen. I created up in here. I've got a manufacturing plant for high grade fear. Well, we came to the 3rd step, and I had one left.

I've been able to forget everything, but I had one left. I was afraid if I really turned my life and went over the care of God completely, that he put me on the corner of Colfax and Broadway, handing out watch to our magazines asking strangers, have you been saved, brother? I've got this palatial suite and sell b 49 right in the Colorado State Penitentiary, and I just couldn't see me lowering myself to that. Lack of proportion and the ability to think straight. See, I had a model for that.