The Pacific Palisades Workshop in Los Angeles, CO

Let's welcome today's speaker, Wes. Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Wes. I am an alcoholic. Yes.

To take off my coat, my friends in sobriety that know me a long time accuse me of having a Pacific meeting moment. Dress this way. I'm a little too far west for that, I think, at this point. I got sober 11/2019/91, And, you saw my wife take a birthday cake. We've been together since 1977.

So if you're wondering if relationships and sobriety can happen, they can. And, it's my experience, strength, and hope that they happen a lot based on, first, me working the 12 steps and then me working the traditions that Kareem just read. And a big trick to relationships I've learned in sobriety is the concept of contrary action, which means that I need to listen when I wanna talk, I need to stay when I wanna run, and I need to give when I wanna take, which actually works for my whole sobriety, but especially works in staying married. Just a tip for anybody thinking about that journey. I wanna thank Mark for asking me to, come speak.

I came I came all the way from Denver, Colorado to speak this morning. And I came here specifically to LA this weekend to do that. And, I had no other reason for coming here outside of the reason I always have for coming here, which is I absolutely love Los Angeles, AA. This is a mecca of Alcoholics Anonymous. And if you've traveled around and you've gone to meetings in other places, it's my experience as I have that you can find great recovery wherever you go.

But there is a spirit in recovery in Southern California that is absolutely magical. And, I just coming here is coming home. And when I first got sober, I I would meet with Mark. Mark's been part of my sobriety from the very beginning. And we would go to the this meeting when it was in the synagogue, and we would hear people like Verne w talk about people being dumber in a sack of hammers.

And, and, you know, I'm from Texas. So when somebody starts talking like this, I just immediately just hook right into it. You know, it's home. And I would hear Vern, and I heard so much wisdom, and I got the tools for living in Alcoholics Anonymous. And, I wanna let the newcomers know I did not come into Alcoholics Anonymous fully formed as I am now.

I, was an absolute wreck. And, just a little bit of where I come from, outside of Texas, I started drinking really early, about 14 or 15, which is actually now that I've heard most of your stories, is actually a late start. But, my father, god bless him, had this theory. He had the responsible beer in the refrigerator theory. So here's how the theory worked.

If I knew that I could go to the refrigerator anytime I wanted and get a beer, I didn't have to sneak around and make some sort of clandestine, you know, act out of it. Of course, you know, teenage years, you're compelled to sneak around. It's just part of being a teenager. But the the point was if I knew I could go get a beer anytime out of the refrigerator and just drink it, I wouldn't have to go off and do all the horrible, crazy things that teenage boys in Texas especially do because there's not much else. And, I would learn to drink responsibly.

And that may be an absolutely beautiful theory. I don't know. I'm an alcoholic. So it was just, like, let me into the candy store. You know?

And so that got me started, but I kinda kept a lid on it. I didn't really drink heavily until I turned 18 years of age. And back in the old days in, Texas, you could drink legally at 18. That was my senior year in high school. I was off and running.

I was drunk the whole last half of my year in high school. And, it was okay because I was legally drunk, whatever that means. I was drunk, but it was legal to get what I needed to get drunk. And so I I spent, my whole senior year in high school. And when I, when I moved out of the house at 18, I had one of those upbringings that 6 months before my I graduated from high school, my family moved out of the house they were in.

And we had I have 2 siblings. So we had a house, nice little suburban Texas house, and there were 3 bedrooms, one for each of us kids. And they moved into a house with only 2 bedrooms for the kids. And it was like, here's a hint. You're 18.

We'll see you. Good luck. Take care. Have a nice life. We love you, but no room in the end for you anymore, amigo.

So, after spending the last half of my high school senior year sleeping in a walk in closet. I know. It's so sad. I got my first apartment, which I promptly furnished with cases of beer. I mean, one of those, because you could go to the Texas is great, man, for alcoholics, because they got these drive through beer barns.

You know, I mean, if you it's like guns and ammo next door drive through beer barn. And so you you go I would drive through the beer barn, and I had to buy a pickup truck because it just made it easier for the guys to load the beer in the back of the, and you could buy those big thick cardboard cases of beer. And I bought, like, 6 of them, and the only thing in my refrigerator when I first moved into my apartment is longneck beer after longneck beer. And, I just threw little, you know, tablecloths over the beer cases and scattered them around my efficiency apartment, and I was furnished. You know?

And you changed your furniture every so often because you took the beer case back. It was good. Good system. So what happened? It was fun for a little while, and then it just got bad and kept getting worse.

But it's funny how that works for an alcoholic like me because I don't know the difference between bad and worse because bad's already my baseline. You know? So I'm starting to slide downhill, and I don't even really understand what downhill means. I'm just picking up speed. You know?

And I'm headed for the bottom of something that I don't know. Thankfully, you know, thank god there is a bottom. Because the way I was going, I could have proved infinity through alcoholism. I could have kept falling forever, and the bottom of infinity would have been institutions, jail, or death. And I almost died a couple of times.

You know, drunk driving in Texas in those days was a sport. My wife and I used to do this thing where we we lived out in the country, and there was these little windy country roads. And we were always into metaphysics. So what we would do is we would drive this. It's a little narrow two lane road and every corner is a blind corner, and we had this little 1972 Triumph TR 6 Convertible.

And, and we're driving, and we would be driving. It was like, can we get from point a to point b, you know, in x amount of time? And the only way we can do that is to drive 60 miles an hour. Never let the speedometer dip below 60. And the only way to do that is to take the curves in the oncoming traffic lane.

And the only way to do that is you had to know if they were coming. You had to feel it. So we'd be and we would have a little group conscious on this. You know? We're bombing down the road, and I'm I'll be screaming over the wind noise.

Do you feel one coming? And she'd be going, no. Let's go for it. And we you know, oncoming lane, and we're still here. Absolutely insane.

It's it is it is the grace of God that I didn't kill myself, my wife, or anybody else with that kind of insanity. You know? It's just a contact sport in Texas drunk driving. So I, I moved from Austin, Texas, where I had a small recording studio. My life on the outside kinda went like this.

Bored with college, at 18, go into the work world, become a working musician, work in a bunch of different businesses as well because, you know, work being a working musician pays so well. And, and I ended up I ended up being, at 25 years old, the vice president of this $10,000,000 company, and I had a 130 people working for me. And I lived every day in that job in abject terror. Okay? Because there was this disconnect between the reality of what I was living and the way I felt about what I was living.

And that that can continue into sobriety, I found out. But this disconnect was that if they ever find out, whoever they was, if they ever find out that I'm just this scared 25 year old kid in charge of all these people, I am hosed. They're gonna throw me away. And I just lived in mortal terror, and the way I coped with that mortal terror was my usual lunch, which was to go drink drink 3 pitchers of beer and come back and finish the day. I did that for years.

I went from 25 vice president of big company, well, modest sized company, a 130 employees, big honcho, to, basically, mowing yards for this guy. Not that there's anything wrong with mowing yards. It's a noble thing to do, and yards need mowing. Okay? But I went from vice president to yard boy for a guy.

It wasn't even my business. It was this guy who'd already been to the Texas State Penn twice for running meth labs, and I was his yard boy. And that was just how the outside of my life was working. The inside was doing far worse. So I end up in Los Angeles, California because Austin, Texas at the time just did not appreciate the depth and magnitude of my character and my talent.

And so I came to LA where, of course, everyone would immediately recognize what a swell guy I was. And I ended up in a little apartment over off Wilshire and, Wilton, I think it was. And why did I end up there? I knew one guy in LA. He was a wine salesman.

I got drank lots of wine off that guy. My last drunk was with that guy. Really nice man. Good Irishman. Why he drank wine instead of beer?

I don't know. He was a little identity confused, I think. But he, anyway, he was a really nice guy. And so I move in there. And at this point, I'm pretty much terrified and I can't get out of my apartment.

And I've also discovered, what was it, like, 28 bottles of wine for $7 at Trader Joe's at the time or something, and I just never left my apartment. You know? I was I was doing work that nobody was hearing, and I was terrified from going outside. And I'd reached a point where, physically, what had happened to me is I had a rash from my neck to my groin pretty picture, I know but red welps on my chest. And I didn't know that was alcohol poisoning.

And I didn't understand why when I went to bed at night, if I didn't drink at least 16 ounces of beer or whiskey or something, if I didn't drink alcohol before I went to bed, I would wake up at 2 in the morning convulsing. I didn't understand that that was called the DTs. And I didn't understand that you can take a barbiturate addict and lock him in a room on a Friday, and you can talk take an heroin addict and you can lock them in a room on a Friday, and you can take an alcoholic who's got advanced stage alcoholism and lock them in a room on Friday, and you can give neither of those 3 people their drug of choice, and on Monday, there will be 1 corpse, and it will be the alcoholic. I didn't know that the DTs could kill me. I didn't know anything.

And so what happened? How did I get here? I'm living in this little apartment, and for really the first time in my life, I'm not holding down a job. I'm terrified of the world outside, And my wife gets a job working as a dental assistant in Beverly Hills. And this little guy comes in.

He's a giant among men, but he's small in stature. He would become my sponsor, a guy named Paul W. His name's Paul Williams he encourages me to use his name, for no reason then he doesn't mind that you know he's an alcoholic. And, by the way, I forgot to mention, my last name is Hamil, Wes Hamil, h a m I l. If you are in Denver, Colorado and you need to find an alcoholic to talk to, my last name, Wes Hamil, h a m I l.

I am in directory assistance. You can find an alcoholic to talk to in Denver, Colorado if you can remember my name. And I will talk to you because you were there to talk to me. And you guys saved my life just by saying hello. So what happened is this.

She goes in. She's working on this guy. He's got this little earring with a circle and triangle in it. She goes, oh, I know what that symbol is. And he goes, really?

Thinking he'd found a kindred spirit, one of us. You know? Well, he had, but we didn't know it yet. And, he goes, well, really? And she goes, yes.

It's called the sacred tehas, which in fact, it is. It's a symbol that's been around a couple of 1000 years. Circle is the wholeness and completeness of God's spirituality, and the triangle is man's reaching for that unity. That's what that symbol's meant for a couple of 1000 years. Like any good organization, the old saying, amateurs borrow, professionals steal.

AA stole a good one there. So she lays all this enlightenment on him and goes, oh, really? Well, you know, I'm just a member of a fellowship that doesn't drink one day at a time. And we help each other out with that. Do you have a problem drinking?

And God bless my wife. She said, no, but my husband does. Now her part of the story is if there's 2 bottles of wine on the table, it's gonna be a race to see who was gonna finish 1 first. But, you know, there's no accident that she's sober too. She didn't just come in to give me moral support.

You know what I mean? So what ends up happening is she plays this song I'd written for him. And he goes, you know, I like that song. I'm gonna call that guy. What's your phone number?

He was just using it as excuse to make a 12 step call. So he calls me on the phone. I could get a phone and she tells me, I met this guy and she tells me who she meets, and he heard your song, and he's gonna call you, and blah blah blah blah. And I'm at the point where I'm thinking, you know, certainly something about my what's wrong with my life is my career, obviously. And so I get a phone call from this guy, and he says, hi.

This is Paul Williams. And I'm thinking, I'm Johnny Carson. He goes, no. This is Paul Williams. And he starts talking to me about this song, And I know it's gotta be him because the only person other than my wife on the planet that's ever heard this would have had to be him from this story.

So I start talking to him, and he starts telling me about this thing called Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm like, it sounds kinda weird to me. But he goes, why don't we he goes, are you staying sober? And I said, yes. Because I was.

I hadn't had a drink that day. He goes, are you going to meetings? I go, what's a meeting? He just laughed. He said, I'll tell you what.

I gotta go out of town, but 30 days from now, I'll be back, and I'll meet you at a meeting. And I'd like to meet you, and I'd love to learn how you're staying sober without meetings. That was a hook. You know? I'm like, yeah.

I'd like to meet this guy. So this is this is where I learned about a little thing I call sodryati. Sodriety is where you're not drinking and you're not using and you're not you don't have any form of recovery. So dryady. 30 days, I did not drink.

Why it didn't dawn on me to not drink and just lie? I don't know. But I did not drink because I was not gonna meet this guy and say I had a drink. I was on self will or West will run riot. And so he comes and I finally meet him at this well, actually, what really happened is this is a sad part of my story.

You know, alcoholism, there's a book there's a chapter in our book called Keys to the Kingdom. And then if you're new, look up that story because that story is full of hope. It also tells the truth about something that was really true for me, which is it describes that loneliness and that awful ache so deep in the heart of every alcoholic as to be disconnected from everything that represents life. And that was me. That was completely me.

And the saddest part of it is that I would go to bed at night, and I would lie down next to a woman I knew I absolutely loved, that I had been with for 14 years at that time, and feel the most bottomless sense of loneliness lying right next to someone I knew I loved, and that is a miserable place to be and a horrible way to live. And I've never met an alcoholic who has not visited that place. And I was in that place when I came back from Trader Joe's, of course, and I took out on a afternoon, 1 afternoon. I can't remember the day of the week. I think it was no.

Yeah. I think it was a Tuesday. I took out a 38 caliber Derringer that I had brought with me from Texas because, hey, I'm from Texas. You've got to have a gun. And I loaded it, and I cocked it, and I sat on the edge of my bed, and I stared.

I pointed it at my forehead, and I looked at the barrels of that, and I was drunk, and I was full of self pity and no hope. And I said, that just doesn't look so scary. And then a great thing happened to me. It is my belief and my experience and my strength and my hope that God will talk to me in whatever language I am capable of understanding in that moment. And if God had talked to me in that moment sitting on that bed about 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, which would be kinda like the Peanuts cartoons where the grown ups talk and they go, That would be what the 12 steps would have sounded like in my ears at the time.

Now, God talked to me through the language of codependency. God said, but think about how your wife's gonna feel when she comes home and find you splattered all over the bedroom. Think about how your family's gonna feel when they get the news that you killed yourself. Think about that. One moment outside of the self obsession, codependency absolutely saved my life.

And I put the gun down. My wife came home that day, and she said something that changed my life. She said, I'm scared of you. Now that's not a thing that I'm particularly proud of, but it's the truth. Because I was an emotional bully, because I was so miserable, I was so intent on destroying who I thought I was that if you loved me, you had to be some kind of dumb, stupid human being that deserved to take the fall with me.

So I made your life pretty miserable too. And what happened? Summoning all the spiritual largess I could find. When she said, why don't you go to those meetings Paul talked about? My enlightened response was, if it will get you off my ass, I will do it.

And I went the very next day to a place called the log cabin. Gotta love the log cabin. And I parked my van across the street. And I walked in on shaky legs. And I got to those front steps, which seemed like the steps to the Parthenon at the time.

I mean, that was like 700 steps up to the entryway of the log cabin. It was this really skinny guy standing at the top of those steps named Malek. And he stuck his hand out, and he reached down those steps, the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. He said, welcome. And it felt like he pulled me into the room of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Amazing, man. And I I walked through that room, and I got a cup of coffee. And thank God you guys weren't charging for it because I had no money. And I got over, and I sat on the wall, judgment row. I sat there, and I listened, and I heard the story of my life.

I heard it from a 6 foot 4 inch, black Vietnam veteran named Tony I'm who looked nothing like me, whose life was nothing like me, and whose heart was exactly like mine. And from that day, I have never left Alcoholics Anonymous, because it's the language of the heart around here. And one of the things I want to talk about my journey in recovery because that's where all the funds have been. You know? And, yeah, if you're new, life is not gonna quit being life.

And the thing I had to learn is that I take life a lot more personally than life takes me. You know? But that's okay. I went and I I dove into the steps, and I was about 2 years sober, and this guy came out and spoke Jim something or other. I can't I've seen him once, never seen him again.

And he gave this little talk, and it really wrapped my brain around recovery. And this is what he said. Because I had worked I had worked all 12 steps by that time for the first time. And by the way, if you're new in this room and the steps feel like penance for having screwed up your life, That's okay. Because that's how they felt to me at first.

They were the price. All right. I got to do this thing. I'm going to have to suffer through these damn steps so I can have a life because that's what you guys tell me. And so I did them, you know, dragging my cross all through all 12 of them.

Parking lot dings on every step. And, this guy comes to the cabin, and he speaks, and he says, hey. He goes, let's talk about the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. He goes, if you want what we have. And do you want what we have?

And we're all like, yes. We want what you have. You know? And he goes, well, if you want what we have and he stops. He goes, what do we have?

Fair question. What do we have? We're all just kinda like, do we get thrown out if we answer wrong? He goes, what do we have? And we're all sitting there going, and he goes, having had, past tense, a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps.

That's what we have. Having had. If you're at 12, you're have you've had it. You may not even recognize it, but you've had it. Having had a spiritual awakening is the result of these steps.

He goes, anybody here sign on to the idea that sobriety is one day at a time? We're all like, yes. Yes. We we drink the Kool Aid. Yes.

And he's like, well, if you believe the sobriety's one day at a time and you want what we have and what we have as a spiritual awakening is the result of these steps, not a, the, then you got to work all 12 steps every day. It just floored me. I'm thinking it took me 2 years to get this far. I'll never get anything done with my day if all I'm doing is working the 12 steps. And I started thinking about that.

And from that conversation came a morning meditation practice that I've practiced to this day, and I practiced it this morning. I get up every morning. I sit in my meditation. And I've got a tip for you on meditation, by the way. But I I sit in meditation, and I say, you know what?

I am still powerless over alcohol. I am powerless over drugs. I'm powerless over lots of stuff, All the stuff that's making me crazy, usually. And my life is unmanageable. And then I do step 2.

And I because I've been around here since 1990 one, I absolutely have come to believe that a power greater than myself, and it may be in the form of one of you for that day, is gonna restore me to sanity because you might tell me something that just puts me back on track and usually do. And then I make a decision that I'm gonna try this thing. And then I sit and do an inventory every morning. You can call that your 10th step, you can call it your 4th step, however you wanna go about it. And then, I make an amends list every day before I walk out of the house.

What does that mean? That means that I think about all the ways I've been thinking, acting, and behaving that are somewhat less than sober or that are causing me trouble getting through this world. And I look at what I'm gonna do today that's gonna be different. In other words, what am I gonna change? In other words, what am I gonna amend?

And that's my 8th step. And when I leave my house in the morning, I am in step 9. I am in the state of mind that this is who I'm going to be today. And as I go through my day, I I I do what I call the pay attention step. To me, that's step 10.

Pay attention. You know? I don't wanna get to the end of my day and find out I've been a crazy alcoholic. I wanna get to the end of my day and feel like I had a sober day. You know?

And sober is so much more than just not drinking and using. Just not drinking and using is sobriety. And I want sobriety. So I go through my day. I pay attention with a 10th step.

I'll stop in the middle of the day. You know, the men's restroom in my office is a great place for me to hide and get my composure. I'll sit in a stall and pray and meditate if I have to to get back on track. And I practice the 12th step in all my affairs. I help people that aren't alcoholics.

Can you imagine that? Because that's what you guys told me to do. You know, I kinda get sad sometimes when people say in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, but this is the only place I can get this love. Well, why? Why is that?

It didn't have to be that way. I don't think if I'm really living my 12 step. I could get this lots of places. I get healed and healthy in here, though. But I gotta take what you guys give me here and take it out there, or I'm not doing my sober job.

That's just the way I see it. Meditation. Great tip, especially you new folks where meditation's like, man, the mind's just miles and minute. By the way, I'm not one of those people that believes in the committee. I think it's a great little gimmick.

I think it's a wonderful little thing to call the chatter in my head. But But you know what? The chatter in my head is me. It's not somebody else. My disease, it's mine.

Okay? I believe if I'm gonna live sober in this world, I have to be I mean, it may not be my fault I'm an alcoholic. You know, I have a disease, and it may not be my fault I'm an alcoholic, but it's damn sure my responsibility. You know? I have to own this deal.

And I have to own my recovery. Now, well, first way I own my recovery is I own my disease. Step 1. I'm powerless over this deal. I'm an alcoholic.

I own that. That's okay. It's not all I am. Because of you guys, I have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. I'm in recovery today, but I gotta own that too.

You know, you can define yourself in Alcoholics Anonymous by your disease. I'm just a sober horse, Steve. Great. Have a nice lunch. Or you can define yourself by your recovery.

I live my day as a recovered human being. That's who I want to be. You know? I am an I I love what what the gentleman with 30 years said. That's how far away that drink is from me.

But if I'm owning my recovery, I don't have to walk around afraid of every beer bottle I see. It is God's grace that I'm sober. But I'm no more chosen by God than the the drunk that's down on Hollywood Boulevard. It's not that we're chosen by God, those of us who stay sober. It's that we choose God back.

You know? And that's the important part of this deal. God already chose me, man. I mean, I'm a lie. There's the choice.

I got I wrecked my life and I got sober. Am I gonna choose God? That's my responsibility. If you want to learn how to meditate, work with newcomers, and learn how to listen. Because meditation is getting quiet and listening, And great practice for learning how to listen is to work with a newcomer and listen to what they have to say rather than wait to, you know, impart some wisdom.

The greatest thing that ever happened to me in in sponsorship is I gave a guy cake 1 year, and he was, I wanna thank my sponsor. And I was thinking, well, he's gonna obviously say something about, you know, some bit of wisdom I've laid on him. You know? And he said, I'm gonna thank Wes because Wes always sits in the same chair at the log cabin. That was his reason for thanking me.

And I was like, right on. Consistency is far more important than wisdom. Just keep showing up. Be present. Listen.

Serve. Service has been huge for me. And here's the deal on service. For me. Wow.

It's important I remember that I not let what AA gives me take me away from AA. Because AA gives me a life. It gives me relationships. It gives me opportunity. It gives me hope.

It gives me a big life. And if I let all those things that AA gives me take me away from AA, I'll be gone. I've seen it too many times. I've been to a lot of funerals from a lot of good people that were really sober and then they weren't. You own your disease, but you've got to own your recovery.

So you know, I wanna I wanna skip ahead and close here. When I was a year sober, I found a way of connecting to my higher power through, sweat lodges, vision quests, ceremonies. I've been all over the west. I've sun danced with the Shoshone. I've I've done a lot of cool stuff, exploring a conscious contact with God.

And along the way, I've learned this great prayer, and I wanna give it to you. Do with it as you will. It's called the Beauty Way prayer, and it goes like this. There's this thing called walking in beauty, and to me, it perfectly describes sobriety. When I walk in beauty, I'm in balance with my emotions, are balanced with my intellect and my logic, And my physical health is balanced with my spiritual health.

I'm right in the center of the wheel of who I am. I am perfectly balanced. I am walking in beauty. And when I am sober, I am walking in beauty, which is my prayer for all of you. As you go from this place today, May beauty walk before you.

May beauty walk beside you. May beauty walk above you and below you. When you touch, may you touch with beauty, and may you always leave beauty in your trail. Thanks for letting me share.