The regular Thursday Night speaker meeting in Shelbyville, TN

Hello. My name is Rick Mercer. I am and I always will be an alcoholic. I always will be an alcoholic. I'm glad I know that.

I think I might have been born into alcoholism, and I think I I say that because there's a lot of it in my family. Pretty much all my relatives except for sister and, my grandmother. Both my grandfathers were hardcore alcoholics. Both of them died when I was 8 years old. My grandmother in 1971, I was 13 years old.

I had the misfortune of finding her passed away. She drank herself to death. I remember when I was a young kid, my mom and dad had taken my grandmother over to our house and was gonna try to sober her up. And, the funniest thing happened. She, needed a drink real bad.

She drank a lot of wine. And she went locked herself in the bathroom and eventually my mom and dad got worried about her and ended up opening the door, and she had drank some aftershave. And I just couldn't believe that somebody could go and do something like drinks and aftershave. And I thought it was funny at the time. You know, me and my brother and sister all kinda laughed and chuckled about it.

Today, I know that that's not funny at all, and I know why she drank the way she did. Like I said, I have a whole lot of alcoholism in my family. I have an uncle who died in an esophageal hemorrhage. His wife passed away. She got cancer and died, and he literally drank himself into an esophageal hemorrhage where his esophagus burst and he bled out every pore in his body.

I myself, when I was about 13 years old, I had my first experience with alcohol. It was, Mad Dog2020. Good stuff. Me and a couple of my buddies, we got a I guess, I don't know what size it was back then, but we got the biggest bottle of Mad Dog that we could find. Somebody down the street bought it for us.

And we went to this elementary school down the street and we opened that thing up, and I tasted it, and I remember how nasty it tasted. But I remember that warm feeling, and I remember wanting more of it. My buddies didn't drink very much, and I pretty much polished off whatever was left over. And we let our heads down in the elementary school. We were looking up at the at the stars, and I thought things I'd never thought before.

I said things I'd never said before, and I felt like I was in control. What's funny about that is I didn't feel out of control before that. See, I'm an alcoholic, and I drink because I am an alcoholic and no other reason, not because of the way I was raised, not because of people calling me skinny when I was a kid, not because of getting whoop ins from my parents. This book here tells me that most alcoholics who drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. That's exactly what happened to me.

I I drank that stuff, and I loved the way it made me feel and the things I said and the way I thought. I had a good childhood. Both my parents were excellent parents. We went on family vacations every year. I I was blessed enough to go to Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Tetons and all over the West.

And so it wasn't like there was anything wrong with my childhood. I wasn't, like, searching, you know, if I can only find some liquid that would fix me because I re I basically wasn't broken. But when I started drinking, I loved what it did to me, and and I continued that, pretty much on the weekends. I was able to get my hands on back then, it was Boone's Farm wine or spinata or just anything I can get my hands on. In that year, 1971, was kind of an important year for me.

It was the year my father, he worked at Pepsi Cola. He got fired. He was, I guess you'd call a functional alcoholic. He provided, was at home basically every day, was a good husband and a good father, but he was like a binge drinker. He'd be there every day for 2 years and all of a sudden he'd be gone for 3 or 4 days.

Anyway, I'm kinda lost where I was here for a minute. It's been a while since I spoke. And I, you know, I tried to prepare things the first couple of times I I talked. So tonight, I didn't prepare a thing because first time I talked, I didn't say anything that I prepared. Anyway, alcoholism was really, really rapid in my family.

And then, I started oh, 71. The year I found my grandmother dead that year. My father had gotten fired from Pepsi Cola, and my mom had to go to work because my father went on this kind of a bench for quite a while and he would he didn't work for quite a while. And my sister had left the house and it was it was kinda like the few women that were in my life all kind of vanished. You know, we had a real structured home.

Dinner was on the table every night. Mom and dad and my family was there, and all of a sudden, there was no more structure in my home, basically. My mom was at work. She wasn't there, and I started experimenting quite a bit with alcohol. It wasn't too much longer after that I discovered drugs, and I did a ton of drugs.

This is AA, and I'm not going to talk a whole lot about it, but I will tell you I shot up cocaine for about 8 years. I had an affair with cocaine for a long, long time, and I've done every kind of drug you can imagine, but I was able to quit doing drugs. I could not stop drinking. When I quit doing the drugs, my alcoholism really skyrocketed. But, like in high school, there was a lot of I grew up in Los Angeles, California, and there was parties all over the place in the summertime with kegs and rock and roll bands playing in the backyard.

I always had a half pint of brandy in my pocket. I mean, it was all the beer you could drink and we were smoking a lot of pot and doing whatever, but I always had a bottle of Heron Walker brandy, peach, or apricot, or some kind of brandy on me. Beer just never really did it for me a whole lot. I ended up going in the air force after I got out of high school, and I had already strung together quite a career of partying by the time I got went into the Air Force. I just turned 18 and I knew I was gonna go in the Air Force like my father did.

I was gonna be somebody. I wanted to see the world. I wanted to travel, and, that's exactly what I did. But when I got out of basic training, I had a 5 hour layover in Dallas Fort Worth Airport. I hadn't drank for 6 weeks, which is the basic training time.

And I was in uniform and, like I said, we had a 5 hour layover and they served me liquor in a bar, and I thought I was somebody. I mean, I was here. I was 18 years old. The drinking laws in California were 21, And I hadn't had a drink in a while, and I walked in this bar with this guy named Dutch Hamburg that flew home with me, and we were somebody. Let me tell you.

I remember I ordered I believe it was a screwdriver, double shot of screwdriver in Michelob. I had a pocket full of money, and we just started pounding. Next thing I know, it was like I just woke up from a dream or something. I was in California. I have no idea to this day what I did, what happened.

The guy that I was with, I asked him. I said, did I pass out? Did I go to sleep? He said, no. You were a crazy SOB, and I had no idea.

And I was that was the beginning of my blackout career and I've had 1,000, literally thousands and thousands of blackouts. I don't want to go into too too much of a drunk log, but I have quite the drunk log. I never quite in the big book where it talks about we tried different methods, wine and, you know, all the other stuff and swearing, I never tried none of that stuff. I never attempted to stop partying, doing well, I quit doing drugs, but I never attempted to quit drinking alcohol ever until I got handcuffed by the police in Murfreesboro in 1996 and taken to the VA hospital. My my story is kinda ugly.

There's a lot of ugly parts to it, and I kind of need to hear them. I know when I got here, I needed to hear some of the stuff that I went through because I related to it because I was the kind of guy peeping his pants a lot. I'm not proud of that but I did. When I first got here, I needed somebody to say that because I thought I was unique or something. Everybody didn't pee in their pants, did they?

No. They didn't, but I sure did. I did a lot. I had some really bad health when I got here. From my 1st year that I was when I was in that building down the street, I had to go have my blood pressure checked every single day.

I had to monitor it. I had to write it down and show my doctors. I went to the doctors a lot. See and my mother and father moved back out here from California in 1996. They had bought a house in California in 1959, and my father told me, quote, said Ricky, I was born in Tennessee and I'm going to die in Tennessee.

I'm getting out of here, all this smog and excuse me, but he said all these damn foreigners and all this traffic and there ain't no trees and I wanna go home. Well, he ended up selling his house and he bought a house in Murfreesboro. And a 112 days after he got here, he passed away. And I was in California just all I did was drink. I I mean, my I lived in hotels at the time.

Never had any kind of a relationship with women my entire life, basically, because I was too doggone busy partying and drinking. And earlier I said something about the women out of my life. The first time I ever had sex with a woman, 8 days later she killed herself. And I kinda equated and I looked back on it. When I went to my 4 step, I found a lot of this stuff out.

I had a real fear of abandonment from women. Because, like, my mom left the house and, you know, went to work. My sister left, and there was no other women in there. My grandmother died. I found her dead.

And I had this wall up with women. And in that, on page 6869, that thing about sex, I definitely need an overhauling of my sex life because I, in my road down my little path that I went down, I wouldn't let women get close to me, basically, because I was afraid I'd get hurt or they'd leave me or whatever. So I had several occasions where I used ladies of the evening because that way I could do and get what I wanted and be done with it. You know, I didn't have to have no kind of contact, you know, close contact. They didn't know who I was.

And I'm not proud of that either, but I did. Kinda lost track of where I was again. Anyway, anyway, my father passed away, and I and I ended up coming out here because my mom and my dad were married almost 50 years. She was a housewife her entire life, slept with 1 man her entire life, and she was absolutely devastated and she was lost. So I put everything that I owned in a storage unit in California.

I quit my job, and I came out of Tennessee. Part of it was because I knew it was, she was my enabler, to tell you the truth. You know, I came because I love her and she needed my help. But in the back of my mind, I knew that I had a free ride, and that's exactly what I had. Her memory was going kinda bad, and her memory was going really bad, to tell you the truth.

I came out here, and I got a job. I painted all my life, commercial painter. I got a job at a company called Brushworks in in Murfreesboro, like, like, the, like, the 3rd day that I worked there. I came home and she paid the property tax twice, and she was messing things up. Plus, she was really grieving bad over my father.

So that was all I needed. I quit my job. I gotta be here to, make sure the bills aren't double paid and all that. And I didn't work at Lick for 2 years when I was in Murfreesboro. I used that as an excuse not to do anything but drink.

And that's exactly what I did. Anyway, she ended up she had Alzheimer's disease is what her memory problem was. And I took care of her the best I could for 2 years, which was absolutely a pathetic job, to tell you the honest truth, because I couldn't hardly take care of myself. And I'm not proud of that neither. And I wish that's part of my life.

I wish I can go back and do it again because I sure would do it different. Because, she was my bestest friend in the whole wide world, and I love her dearly, and she deserved better than that. Anyway, my sister came out from California, just popped up one day, just out of the blue, and she ended up taking my mom back to California. And she ended up going into an assisted living program. Well, the house wasn't in the best condition in the world.

I was dealing with my inner anger, my inability to not drink. I knew I had a serious problem. I knew I had a real bad problem. I knew I had a bladder problem too, and it was going on frequently. And through my frustrations and everything, I punched a lot of holes in the wall.

The house was filthy. I had gotten to where I didn't shower. I didn't take care of myself at all. Anyway, she saw the condition of what what the living conditions are. She got my mom out of there and she should've.

That's exactly what she should've did. So here I am in Murfreesboro, Tennessee and my sister doesn't pay no more bills. I'm not working. I'm not able to work. No power, no water, no ability to make any money.

I pawned everything in the house, everything. It was worth any money. I even pawned my father's, wedding ring, my mom's waiting room, you know, and I'm not proud of that neither. I did a lot of things I'm not proud of. But my drinking had escalated where all I did was pass out and I came to, and that's all I did.

I mean, that wasn't the existence of my life. And on there was a man down the street from a a church. His name is Tim Bratcher. He lives in Murfreesboro. He he had come to my house several times, and he had befriended my mother and father before I got there.

And he knew I needed trouble, and he knew I needed help. There's no doubt about it. He ended up trying to talk to me and to go to church with him, and I didn't want him to do a church at all. I've been in church, by by the way. I went to church last Sunday for the first time since I've been sober.

But I've been in church. I painted a couple churches. I've been a couple of funerals, and I've been to a few weddings. I knew nothing at all about religion. Nothing.

Anyway, so he kept talking to me. It was July 4, 1997. I need to backtrack a little bit. 1997, I had this severe pain in my shoulder I woke up one morning, and, I mean, I had a pain like you wouldn't believe. Really bad.

And I should have gone up and gone to the doctor, but what I did is I medicated it with my liquid medicine. And then I passed out and I'd wake up, and I put ice on it while I was awake until I passed out again, and that's the way I medicated. Well, eventually, it was so severe. It was in my it moved from my neck down into my shoulder. I had to go to the hospital.

And I went to the VA hospital. My mom took me down there. And after hours and hours and hours of all that intake stuff, doctor, they took my vital signs and they put me in a room and they turned on the lights and they said, you've got to calm down. I said, I'm fine. And they said, your blood pressure is 234 over 186.

Yeah. You have kidney damage. You're right. Kidney is not functioning after they did a couple more little tests. Your liver is severely damaged.

My ankles were all puffed up and my liver not working right. I had a demon in my ankles. They said the the problem in your shoulder and your neck is nerve damage. You cannot ever drink again. If you're gonna drink, you're gonna die.

You cannot drink. When I left that hospital, I had my mom stop at the liquor store and I bought a vodka. For 11 more months, I drank, and the doctor said I'd die. You know, the on page, I think it's 34, it says, a baffling feature of alcoholism, the utter inability to leave it alone no matter how great the necessity or the wish. From my Powerball numbers because I relate to that so much because I had all the necessity in the world to quit.

Doctor told me I was gonna die and I wished I didn't drink like I did. I mean, I looked at let me yellow eyes. I weighed £120. I weigh 160 now and I'm skinny as a rail, but I weighed £120 and I couldn't stand what I saw and I wondered what happened in my life. I played semi pro baseball.

I was in rock bands when I was younger. I mean, I had a lot of potential. Not that I was a wonderful person, but I did have a lot of potential, Real energetic and into everything in the world, and I'd wonder what happened to me. Where is that person at? I'm having a drink.

Anyway, I drank for 11 more months and then back up to where this Tim guy helping me. And in between there is when my mom disappeared. My sister came and got my mom. So I decided I was gonna quit drinking. It was 4th July 1997.

I'm gonna quit drinking. And he invited me to a barbecue he was having at his house, and they were gonna play volleyball. And and I said, yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna go down and I'm gonna quit drinking. I went down there that day, and for the first time in a long time, I felt good and I felt comfortable with people.

People were talking to me and they were friendly to me and I played some volleyball and I felt like I was a human being again, to tell you the truth. And, we ended up going to somebody's house after the day, and we had a a bible study. I've never had a bible study in my entire life, and he read something out of John, I think it was. And all of a sudden, I admitted something to him, and I broke down and I started crying, and and I told him something that which is in my 4th step. Because of, an insane minute and result of my behaviors and places, I ended up turning somebody into brain dead, I guess.

I don't know what the exact clinical name is. And I hadn't told hardly anybody. It's the few people who knew this. And I and I admitted this to him when I started crying, and and I was just hurt bad bad. So I hadn't had a drink for, like, 2 o'clock in the afternoon, well, since I woke up that morning up until I don't know what time it was.

The sun was down. And I ended up going home, and I laid on my bed, on my mother's bed. It was gone, and I cried my eyes out. I don't know what happened. God must have tapped into my tear ducts or something because I they just it was like a river, and I asked god to help me.

I absolutely begged god to please help me. Next thing I knew, I woke up and I was strapped down and I had people doing experiments on me and everything, and I hallucinated for the next 3 days in DTs, in this house, all by myself, and I saw things everywhere. I saw things that I can't even I talked to a bird in our house, and we don't own a bird. I had conversations with this bird. I mean, this was so real.

To this day, it seems like it was still real. And I kept calling the Rutherford County Police Department. I called them, jeez, 15 times probably. And I kept telling them, please come and get this stuff out of my house. And they kept convincing trying to convince me there's nothing there.

But by god, it was there up here. DTs or I don't know if anybody's ever been in. Have you ever slipped into DTs and hallucinations? There's something you'll never forget. I guarantee it.

Well, the last time we had the the Murfreesboro or the Rutherford County Police came, they handcuffed me and they said you're either going to jail or you're going to the hospital. It wasn't 2 weeks before that I had told my sister that I was an alcoholic. I had been an alcoholic for 20 years at least. And it's I don't know why that was surprised to her. I mean, I humiliated her at her wedding because I got so drunk.

I needed help to leave the place, but it totally took her by surprise. So I was wanting to get some help. I I have been just so sick and tired of the way I was living. So, anyway, they handcuffed me, and they took me to the Murfreesboro, the VA hospital over there at the VA hospital in Auburn, York. And I got in there and I was going to get sober.

And I was definitely gonna do everything I could do to change my life. And see that by this time, I'm a homeless person because when I left the house, that was it, gone. I lost I had a truck and a car, and everything's gone. And I got in here, and I started going to meetings, and this is the first time that I'd ever been to an AA meeting when when I heard something. I got a lot of DUIs throughout my life, and the judge always sends me to meetings.

I didn't hear nothing. I didn't hear one word. All I heard is I want out of here because I got a bottle out of my car. I'm I don't I'm not like you people. I ain't nothing like you people.

But, I remember hearing some of those old timers old timers over in Murfreesboro say some things, and they started hitting home. I believe Stan, CW were out there back then. And and for the first time, I think, in my life, I heard something that I I related to. And I did everything in my power to just do whatever I could do to get sober till I met Camille, my ex wife. I met this young lady.

She was from New Mexico. 2 weeks later, I ended up moving in with this girl. We got kicked out of VA because she kissed me where we weren't supposed to kiss. Fraternization, they kicked me out. 3 weeks later, I married this woman.

Pure insanity. That's the definition of it to me. I had no idea who I was. I had no clue who she was. See, when I was going to their meetings, I read the steps on the wall, especially step 5.

It made it, I ain't been telling God and another person. I said, I ain't telling nobody my business. Ain't no way. I'm not taking a drink today. God took away my obsession.

I said, God took away my obsession. I'm not going to be nigger on God. I'm never going to take another drink again as long as I live. So I didn't work the steps. I didn't get a sponsor.

I didn't did nothing. What I did is I came in, I took up a seat, and I repeated things that I heard and I was somebody. I was mister sober guy because I was going to a lot of meetings and I was actually I did some little bit of service work over there. I didn't know what it was, but I was trying. What I was doing was trying to impress my God.

See, I made my ex wife, my power greater than myself. I didn't even know I did it, but that's what I did. My happiness depended on her. Everything depended on my ex wife. Anyway, we were together 7 months.

We were physically married 2 years to the day. On my 2 year anniversary, I got my divorce decree. I was at Sunrise Center. On Wednesday, we made love. Thursday, we both took a half day off and we were going to figure out what we're gonna do.

Her kids were coming to our house for the summertime. I spent every cent I had to get furniture, to set up their room real nice, and toys and dresser, all kinds of stuff, beds and everything. On Friday after work, I was gonna come home. We were gonna drive to, Oklahoma City and meet her at the Delta terminal, her ex husband, meet him halfway. And, she was gonna pay for the trip since I paid for all the furniture and then set up everything for her.

I came home from work and there was a note. It said, Rick, call me late Sunday night or early morning Monday morning at my mom's Camille and she left a $10 bill for me. I'd spent every penny that I had. Well, my power greater than myself just left me a note. I hadn't worked the steps.

I had nothing to hold on to. I hadn't and what happened is on page 43 where it says there will come a time when I have no effective mental defense against that first drink. It must come from a power greater than myself. Well, my power has left me a note. I hadn't had a drink for 10 months or 4 days, and to this day, I swear before my maker, I do not remember saying I'm going to go get a drink, making the decision, walking down the stairs, getting in my van, going and purchasing the bottle.

I don't have any memory. The obsession hit me so hard to get drunk. And I got drunk and I stayed drunk 8 months exactly to the day. I did not have one waking second where I wasn't drunk, and the wheels really followed off. See, in those 10 months in 4 months, my liver started getting back to normal.

You know, I got a job, and I was I did was married, and I was eating normal. You know, I had some kind of structure in my life. All of that within 2 weeks, my eyes were yellow. Stomach was all puffed up again, and that's all I did was drink. That's that was my entire existence again.

I'm gonna shut this junk a lot, Brooke, right now in a minute here. The Super Bowl, when the Rams played the Titans, see, the the only real enjoyment I had for those 8 months, it was right in the heart of football season. The Rams were on TV that year a lot for some reason. I grew up in LA. I'm a Rams fan, a die hard Rams fan, and they seemed to be on quite a bit that year.

And for those 3 hours on those Sundays when the Rams were on, I was I had something to smile about, a little sunshine in my life. And they were in the Super Bowl and I was the happiest guy on the world on this planet. You know, that one little area of my life put some joy in my life. That morning at the Super Bowl, the only person that would get near me, my drinking buddy, said, you better not drink that vodka today. You know what happens to you.

Well, I drink vodka that day. I blacked out. I came to about 3 o'clock in the morning. Game was over and I missed it and that had a big time effect on me. It might not sound like much to y'all, but my mom and dad had season passes for years years.

I mean, if they weren't on TV, I listened to them on the radio. I loved them. And when I blacked out and I missed it, it had a big time effect on me. Then the next thing that happened is I went downtown to donate some blood, some plasma. I had no means of working.

I I just was grasping the straws. So I went down there, and I was with every derelict, every pimp, every hoe, every street person there was and I guarantee you, I fit right in. I was one of them. I fit exactly in. I didn't bathe.

I I didn't do nothing except for a drink. And I stood in this line all day with all these people. And I got up there and they're getting ready to poke me with this needle and the man said, I had to smell a real strong smell of alcohol on you. Go home, don't drink, and come back, and we'll give you your $45. I went home and I told myself, I'm not gonna drink.

I couldn't do it. I could not do it. I ended up getting drunk like I always did, and I went back the next day. I was eating breath mints and chewing gum. You know, I thought I was gonna fool them.

Them. The lady that day mistook my urine, she said, son, you have to urine from hell. That's a quote. She said you have to urine from hell. I remember she held it up and you really couldn't see through it because all of my problems, my my internal stuff weren't working right again.

Same thing happened. I got up there and the lady said, sorry. You you you've you've ripped up my paperwork and said goodbye. That had a big time effect on me. You know, it hit me hard.

You know, I couldn't even sell my plasma, you know, with all these other that person is, he looks like he hadn't had a bath in 6 years. I had one 6 months ago. But and then after that, I got evicted from my apartment. And, I was homeless again because I did manage again to an apartment from my marriage. It's a long story.

But, anyway, I got evicted from this apartment, and here I am homeless again. The man from the church, same man, Tim, started knocking on my door out of the blue. He just popped up. And, he ended up taking me to Salvation Army, homeless shelters, any all over the place. And he took me to this place called Room at the End.

It's a it's a homeless shelter over in Murfreesboro. Lady named Christina runs it. And I've been there once before during my homelessness episodes. And I walked up to Christina, and I said, Christina, I need a place to live. Just let me stay here for a little while, please.

I'm gonna go in a VA hospital. I I just need to stay here just for a little while so I can make some money. She said, Rick, I have a bed and you can't have it. She said, you don't need a home and shelter. You need a hospital.

Go look at yourself. You're sick. Nobody's ever told me I was sick before. Nobody. You know?

And I did. I I I had to start literally looking inside, and that was a long, long trip back from that place. My god. A homeless shelter that has a bed has a bed. They won't let me have it.

Anyway, Tim, you kept going. Where do you wanna go now? And I had a moment of clarity where I said take me to the hospital. Take me to the hospital. See, all my sentence to AA meetings, meetings that I went to to be in the hospital.

I knew that the people that were in these rooms were telling the truth. I knew when they were smiling, there was a genuine smile and their eyes were white. They were happy, and and I knew the answers were here. It was either that or death for me. You know, I'm not God.

A lot of people say if I drink again, I'll die. I don't know if I'll die or not. I'd rather die than to get drunk and stay drunk. I swear I would. I'd rather just go ahead and die because there ain't nothing like that waking up dead every day.

Anyway, at this time when I went to the VA hospital, I keep it in neutral. I worry about nothing except for looking at I looked inside. What am I gonna do with my life? I have got to do something different. And there was a I heard the Tony Wright Center, somebody, a black guy with a bald head.

His name is Apple Appleton. I'd love to see him someday so I could thank him. But he talked about he said, ain't nothing fancy. He said, we had a bowling alley there and we had beatings, state tournaments, and we had movie night. It was all real fancy and everything.

He said, there's nothing fancy there. Just as a building in the middle of nowhere and there's a little old man throw a book at you and start screaming and stuff. And I said, that's where I wanna go because the representative told me that you can only go to chapter 25, Matthew 25 in East Nashville. I said, I grew up in LA. There's no way.

If I go to Nashville, I'll be drunk tonight. I can't go to no damn no big city. I've got to go somewhere else. And, I ended up getting the phone number, and I called Tony Wagner. And the man that taught me the big book of alcoholic synonyms, his name is Jim Mittler, and he had it going on back then.

He definitely had it going on. I called and and and I said he didn't say what he's willing to do. He didn't say none of that stuff. I said, I need help. Would you please help me?

He asked me what I did for a living. I said, I'm a painter. He said, you know, you can't paint no more. And I said, I don't care. And he said, I don't have a bed right now.

And I said, I'll sleep on the roof. I will do anything. He told me to call him back, and I ended up calling and kept calling. Finally, he said, we got a bed. No.

He told me, do you mind sleeping on the floor? And I said, I don't I told you. I'll sleep on a roof. And I ended up getting right out to the Turnit Right Center. And from the moment I walked in that place, people started telling me that I was a good man.

I hadn't heard that in a long time. And people shaking my hands, smiling at me, offering me things. When I got there, I had 2 bags of clothes that the VA hospital gave me. I had 2 packs of menthol cigarettes that a veteran at the VA hospital gave me, and I had $21 bills on earth. That's it.

And an old broken down van that was abandoned in Murfreesboro. I ended up having to get rid of junket, but that was it. Anyway, I got in that place, and I opened up my heart and I opened up my mind, and I started listening. And I didn't look for what was different about me. I looked for what was similarities.

And from the very first time I was in Jim Mettler's class, he opened up his mouth. I knew I was exactly where I need to be. Now I know today in my heart, god put me there. There's no doubt in my mind. It wasn't like he was teaching a class to a big class.

It felt like he was teaching a class to me because everything that he talked about out of this big book pertained to me, every word out of his mouth. And, I started praying for the first time in my life earnestly. I had prayed one other time in 1993. I think it was my father had a real severe stroke. I was one of the times my my neighbor was letting me live in her house, and I just happened to be at my parents' house.

And my mom woke up panicked when I screaming. And I we had to call 911, and my father had a bad stroke. And we sat at the emergency room, and the doctor and the head nurse sat my mother and myself down and said, you are going to have to change his diapers. You're going to have to baby feed him. He's had a bad stroke, and they showed us a CAT scan in his brain.

It looked like a dartboard. It was covered in red, little spots. And they said they prepared us to take care of him for the rest of his life, like an invalid or something. And the nurse, I said, isn't there anything you should you can do anything? She said there's nothing medical science can do.

I would suggest that you pray. I don't know how much anybody else prayed, but this is one of the few times in my life. I earnestly and I honestly prayed to God to help my mother, not my father, because I knew she needed him bad. I don't know why to this day I didn't pray for my father, but I didn't. I prayed for my mom.

But 6 days later, my dad came home from the hospital. He did some strange things. He ate some birdseed out of the birdcage in the house, walked around the house naked, and his eyes looked nuttier than crazy, and he looked like a lunatic. His eyes cleared up. He went back to work.

He lived 13 more years. Walked, talked. He lost a little piece of his memory. I didn't realize that until I got clean and sober and worked these steps. God answered my prayer.

I'm positive. Medical science said he's done. You're gonna change his diapers. Nobody ever changed diapers. He went to work and lived 13 more years.

Anyway, so I started praying, and I and I started relating to this book. And I heard the doctor's opinion, And, boy, that answered a lot of questions for me. My first, at least probably a year, I was sober. I said my name is Rick, and I have the disease of alcoholism because I found out that I'm not a bad person. I'm a sick person.

I have a physical allergy coupled with a mental obsession. My thinking is all screwed up. And when I drink alcohol, I can't stop drinking because of this chemical reaction that my body has. And, see, I drank myself pretty much into step 1, 2. Pretty much 3, 2.

There's nothing in this book today that I can read about step 1 that alcohol didn't beat me into. I didn't need to breathe in any nearby powers over alcohol or yet my life was unmanageable. Heck, I was homeless. It was pretty unmanageable. I have severe bladder problem.

I I I couldn't function without alcohol. So I was definitely powerless over alcohol, and my life was extremely unmanageable. And I've always believed in God all my life. When I was a little kid, I'd hear the word g d. For some reason, I'd go like this.

I just can't stand to this day. Somebody's in a meeting and they say, GD, I shut off and I don't listen to nothing else they say. I don't know why. It just happens to me. I just don't like those words together.

So I've always believed in god. So I really knew that the answers were there because because of my belief in God. I remember standing over the Grand Canyon when I was a little kid, and something spiritual happened to me. I was just a little kid. I remember walking like 8 feet and I looked and I'd see something different.

I walked 10 feet more and I just stood there in awe of it. Same thing when, Old Faithful went off. To me, that wasn't just mother nature. That was god. I've always seen through nature, animals, and elderly people for some reason, a spiritual thing.

But, you when I came into that tiny writing up on a chalkboard, we didn't have no fancy board, we just had a chalkboard, and it said, hope, belief, decision, action, results, faith. I've never seen those words. It was the first day I got there. I wrote it in my big book, and I still have that same big book. And I was told that I came in here with a little bit of hope, just a little glimmer, a little flicker of hope.

That's what I had. And if I come to believe in something greater than myself and a ball of booze, and the book says I just gotta be willing to believe that there's a power greater than myself. And there is a power greater than myself. And then if I made a decision to do something about that belief and then take some action This pro this is a program of action. I've learned that.

There's no doubt about it. I can go to 100 meetings this week with Bill w on this arm and doctor Baba on the other arm, and I can sit and warm up those chairs all I want. But if I don't put no action behind it, I'm doing nothing. It's exactly what happened when I had those 10 months 4 days. I wasn't drinking, but I was doing nothing.

Nothing changed in my thoughts. My thinking was the exact same way. You know, when I started taking some action like this book outlines, I started getting results. And they told me from those results, my faith would grow. And that's exactly the way it has happened to this day.

When I put some action in this program, when I harm somebody and I make an amends to them and say, you know what? I was wrong. I have no reason or no right to say what I what I said about you or whatever. I get results for that. There's no more resentment and more hate in my heart.