The Primary Purpose Group's 1st anniversary in Willoughby Hills, OH

I asked Kent because I wanted to hear him. So with no further ado, I'm gonna introduce Kent Coleman from he said, Friday night in Venice. And I said, what? He said, Venice like Italy. I said, My grandmother always said, anything you do will go better if you pray first.

Let's do that. Heavenly father, use me tonight as an instrument that I will speak through me. So whatever result that you desire here tonight will be accomplished in all things. Thy will, not mine, be done. And God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, paragraphs.

I'm more interested in what I do with what I memorize pages and paragraphs. I'm more interested in what I do with what's in that book and knowing where it is. You know, one of the things I was taught when I came to AA is the important thing is not what you do between the serenity prayer and the Lord's prayer, but what you do between the Lord's prayer and the serenity prayer. This is a living program. It's not a talking program.

It's It's not a thinking program. It's not a memorizing program. It's a program of action. But somewhere in our book, it says that certain times, the alcoholic has no effective mental defense against the first drink. And that except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human can provide such a defense.

That defense must come from a higher power. It don't say it ought to come from a higher power. It don't say it might come from a higher power. It doesn't say it should come from a higher power. It says it must come from a higher power.

The single most important fact in my life as I stand here tonight in Willoughby is that I got a power in my life that I choose to call God, who does for me one day at a time what I cannot do for myself. Established and grow in that relationship one day at a time, through practicing to the best of my ability, which is never perfect. Alcoholics Anonymous. And that is the reason that I say a prayer before I introduce myself from behind the podium. I wanna assure each and every person in this room tonight, left up our own devices, I surely would have destroyed myself years ago.

The reason that I'm standing here tonight Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's why I pray before I introduce myself is to keep me reminded and grounded and centered in the truth. And the truth is simply this, the reason that I'm here tonight is to do God's will, not mine. And it also serves to remind me that he is in charge here tonight. And as always, thank God, I am not.

Good evening. My name is Kent Cole. I'm an alcoholic. I am. Honoring and privileged to be here.

I wanna thank Beth and the Primary Purpose Group of Alcoholics Anonymous for allowing me to honor and the privilege of speaking at your first anniversary. No. I I'm blessed to be able to do a lot of this kind of thing, and and I wanna say that it has never been more thrilled than it is tonight. It never gets old for me. I never stop being grateful for it.

I love Alcoholics Anonymous so much that I cannot even put it into words. Alcoholics Anonymous fought me from a meaningless, loveless existence to a quality of life beyond which I never dreamed possible. Alcoholics Anonymous brought me back to life. And, how can you possibly out give AA? I do not say no to Alcoholics Anonymous.

I don't. Sometimes I have to tell you not now. Okay? But I never say no. And, I wanna thank Beth, and I wanna thank this group for having me, come and participate in this celebration of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I was talking to Craig before the meeting. You know, it's gratitude moment. It's November. Okay? And, there's something that I learned in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I wanna share this real quick, is I don't do things in their aid because I'm grateful.

I ain't that healthy. You take a guy like me and you put me in a room for 15 minutes and let you start thinking about my life. I got the kind of mind, maybe you could relate to this, that loves to focus on what isn't as opposed to what is. All of a sudden, my house ain't big enough. My car ain't fancy enough.

Yeah. My wife talks too much. Yeah. Them kids is too bad. You know?

So what I've learned here is I don't do things because I'm grateful. I'm grateful because I do things. When I go to the penitentiary and speak to the guys on Monday nights down in Marion, I walk out of there. I'm grateful for my freedom. When I'm sponsoring a man who can't see his wife and family because he doesn't know where they are or there's a court order preventing it, I'm grateful for my family.

I'm grateful for that house when I'm sponsoring a man who's living in 21100 Lakeside and has no home? See, gratitude is a byproduct of action. Just like everything else in Alcoholics Anonymous, the only things that have ever benefited me in Alcoholics Anonymous have come from action that I've taken, not things that I've known. If you're new here tonight, I wanna share something with you, that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is not about the acquisition of knowledge and intellect. It is about the application of principles in my life one day at a time to the best of my ability.

So I am grateful tonight for Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I started this day. I'm gonna drop this real quick because I wasn't gonna do this. I started today with my telephone ringing. My father's in the hospital.

And I started today talking to a doctor that told me they found a tumor on his kidney. That's how I started my day. My dad is 80 years old. That's how my day started. And I hung the phone up, and I sat down, and I thought about this.

And a lot of things started rushing through my mind. See? But I've been with you guys long enough to know what to do. First, I said a prayer, and I put my daddy in god's hands where he is anyway. K?

Then I called my sponsor. I told him what was going on. K? Then I got up. I got in my car, and I drove to Cleveland to Stella Maris, where I am the director of programs and services.

And I did 2 hours of big book with my guys. And I walked out of there smiling. So you've given me the answer. Right. See?

Trust God, clean house, and help others. And that's how I started my day, and it's a wonderful day. I talked to my father when I was driving out here from Stella, Meredith. My kids was tearing up his hospital room. I could hear Nickelodeon on the TV in the background.

And I asked him how are you doing? He said, I'm fine. God is good. God is good, and he's good all the time. I wanna talk for a minute to those who are new.

Okay. I came to AA. They told me I had to do some things, so they suggested it anyway. They said, these are the kind of suggestions that we make. If you jump out of airplane and you got a parachute on your back, we suggest you pull a rip off.

They're about the kind of suggestions that they make in AA, you know. The first one they said to get a sponsor. And I didn't even know what a sponsor was. And I asked the guy, and he said a sponsor is somebody who has working knowledge and experience with the 12 steps as outlined by the founders in the book, who is willing to take the time to sit down and share with you the program of recovery out of that book. And just as importantly, who can demonstrate in their life what your life can be like if you do what they do.

See, they said working knowledge and experience, not book knowledge. I know how to read. Okay? I have sponsorship in Alcoholics Anonymous today. I'm sponsored by Bill Findlay and Lorraine and Kenny Bob, Illicki and Palmer.

About 81 years of AA between them, Least impressive thing I can tell you. The program of Alcoholics Anonymous, ladies and gentlemen, is not a program of seniority. It's a program of quality. K. For being with Bill McKinney outside the rooms of AA, I've learned how to be a husband, a father, a son, a brother, an employer, an employee, and a decent citizen in the community that I live in.

I came to you with none of those skills in my life. My sponsor, Kenny, told me something. I found it to be true in my experience. He said the only people in age that ain't got sponsors are people that ain't planning on staying. See, I was talking crazy about that before the meeting.

You know why? Because I don't want nobody to know me. I don't want nobody getting close to me because I ain't staying. K? I do this sometime.

Would everybody in this room tonight who would be willing to sponsor a new person in AA, please raise your hand. K. Thank you very much. For all of you who are new and ain't got a sponsor, I'll just hook you up. It's a beautiful thing about it.

Hey, man. You ain't ever have to leave a meeting without the benefit of sponsorship. So, you know, when I was new, I would be sitting in the meetings and I knew I was supposed to be get a sponsor, right? And I'd be looking around and I'd be like, but I don't know who in here does that, you know? Well, now you do.

They told me to get a home group. My home group today is the Friday night dentist group in Alcoholics Anonymous in San Duski, Ohio. Our primary purpose is to carry the alcoholic, the message to the alcoholic who still suffers. I think we do a pretty good job of that. We have a lot of fun in the process.

We've been doing it almost 60 years. No. My own group ain't the best group in the world. It ain't the worst group in the world. My group is just a group.

Some of my sponsors told me when I came in here, it is okay to stop competing now. The war is over. Okay? See, before I came to AA, I always lived my life on a better than or less than basis. And when I live my life on a better than or less than, I'm different basis.

Okay? I'm never a part of. See, this is the last place I cannot be a part of. K? Today, I'm a member of a group.

I'm not the best group in the world. I'm not the worst group in the world. It's an AA group. K? I'm an alcoholic.

I ain't the best one of the worst whenever I'm just an alcoholic. K? And I'm a member of a worldwide fellowship called Alcoholics Anonymous. K? And that's what I like to call the total package in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Sponsorship, home group, big booking steps. In my experience, which is the only thing I'm allowed to share from behind the podium, kind of a little hard to understand why. I have yet to see an alcoholic of our type come into these rooms. If you don't want an alcoholic of our type is, read the book. Come into these rooms, take that total package, apply it to their life one day at a time to the best of their ability, which is all that God asks.

Nobody does it perfect. I've yet to see one do that and go out and take a drink. And I've been here for I haven't seen it happen one time. Ladies and gentlemen, the program of recovery was designed for success, not for failure. On the flip side of the coin, however, I have yet to see an alcoholic of our type come in here, ignore those things, It's that same sober or happy for any appreciable at the time.

The simplicity of the Alcoholics Anonymous, those who do get and those who don't, don't. And it's just that simple. Now I came in AA. I said it right here. I was waiting on it to rub off on k?

You see me share something with you. That's like going to the bar, sitting in the corner, watching somebody else drink and think you're gonna get drunk watching them drink. How absurd is that? Okay. And I come in here, and I watch other people recover, and somehow think that this is the program of osmosis, and somehow it's gonna rub off on me.

K? It's a program of action. Bottom line is this. You know, a man told me when I came in a a son sitting in a chicken coop don't make you no chicken. And you can sit around here all you want.

A And I should know that from my life. I was born in Sandusky, Ohio, where I still live today. And even when I was running without, I was thinking this is a dusty guy. I didn't live out here. That that was my boy.

Al McCauley was the godfather to both of my children. He was the best friend I ever had in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I think about Al every day. And by god, I rode by my own real funeral home on my way out here. And I didn't cry.

I smiled. K. Because that was my boy. Al with me every day. No.

But I was born in Sandusky, Ohio. I'm 49 years old. I was second of 3 boys. I was raised in a Christian home, and I was taught the principles of this program before I went to kindergarten. K.

I had a finer mother and father that had ever graced this earth. K. Mom was gone now. My mom and dad were the best. I saw these principles in action in my house every single day.

And I have faithfulness. Honesty is the best policy. A real man is always honest with himself and other people. If you got caught lying in my house, you got an automatic woman. Did that happen to anybody else's house in here?

The principal of the first step, step 1. My mother said to me one day, Kenny, contrary to what you believe, the sun don't rise when you wake up and set when you go to bed. She said, take a look at the window. Tell me what you see. Trees, birds, flowers, cars, people, sky, grass.

She said, you think they just popped out of nowhere? She said, there's a power that's greater than you that created all of this, and all you have to do is be willing to believe that step 2. And our house, they told us that we would make a decision to put our lives in the hands of that power in our house. They called that power God. Step 3, in our house they told us, anytime you got a problem, take a look at it, come talk to us about it.

No matter how bad you think it is, a problem shared is a problem have solved. You only get sick is your secret. Steps 4 and 5. And our house, mama used to say the biggest room in your life is the room for improvement. If you can make c's, you can make b's.

If you can make b's, you can make a's. And if you will ask that power to help you in any positive endeavor you wanna make in your life, The power will always help you because that's what the power does. Step 6 and 7. And our house, they told us anytime you hurt, harm, or wrong somebody else, go make right or wrong, you're done. You owe an apology, make it.

You owe money, pay it. Clean up your mess. Steps 89. My mother used to say you can never go forward in life if you don't know where you are today and what you need to work on to get where you wanna go. You should always be inventorying the strengths and weaknesses.

Socrates said 3000 years ago, the uninventoried life is a waste. Step 10. Our grandmother told us, you wanna have a good day? Get on your knees in the morning and say one word, please. As you go throughout the day and you don't know what to do, ask for help at night.

Get on your knees and say 2 words. Thank you, step 11. And then our family that told us the greatest thing we could do with our lives was not acquire money and material things. They was the greatest thing we could do with our lives was be of service to others. We was taught to follow the golden rule, talk to people the way we wanted to be talked to, treat people the way we wanted to be treated, to respect our elders.

We were taught to offer to share what we had with others before we had our own. Be of service to your fellow man. Step 12. Was there anybody in here that was talking things when you grow up? K.

For you new people in here, I just took you through the steps. What I want you to know is this spiritually principled living did not originate in Akron, Ohio in 1935. Those principles are ancient. And there's people out there who live like that every single day, and they do not expect a pat on the back for it. Why would I I'm not I don't give pats on the back of it.

Why would I need a pat on the back for living the way that I was raised to live and that god intends for a decent human being to live his life? So a lot of you probably thinking to yourself, well, if you had all that before you went off to kindergarten, what are you doing leading the meeting tonight? Answer to that is pretty simple, ain't it? God never did any of it. I talked about it a great deal, however.

I'm one of them drunk. Do you ever be in the bar and it's a drunk in there quoting scripture? That was me. I'm down to Brownlee's Tavern. There's a man crying in his beer, usually because he's getting divorced, going to jail, or losing his job, because that's what we did on a regular basis down in Brownlee's.

And Kent would stagger over with a drink in his hand and say something like this. Luke, chapter 7 verses 12 to 15. I'm giving spiritual guidance down to Brownlee's Tavern. And I need to just stop with that. I get married for counseling down to Brownlee's.

I had never been married, but I didn't see how that made a difference. When my life's name is laying on the bar, I give financial guidance down to Brownlee. My father called me a walking encyclopedia of perfectly useless information. K? Why?

Because none of that was born in my experience. It's something I read in the book or overheard somebody else say. See, I can become a parent in AA too. So and so used to say, the big book say on page 35, hey, dog. This is what I tell my how you living?

How you living? I'm not I don't care what you say. How you living? If you live in this, you don't have to tell me because I could see it. See?

None of the things I said was born on my experience. So when I would if somebody was listening to me, hey, you know, there's no there's no depth or weight to that message, is there? Because it's not one of experience. I was restless here, a little discontent as a kid, shy, insecure and afraid. I felt people that was a prime candidate to have problems without power.

I always felt somehow different than, less than, or behind than other people my own age. As a result of this, I used to follow my older brother around a lot. My older brother was 4 years older than me. He's a football star, so does his football time. And, he stayed.

He went wherever he went. 4 years older than me. Never understood why. I know why today because we won't have that much time. I got a brother 4 years younger than me.

We almost 50. I ain't took him nowhere yet. But my brother would take me with him. And I had a sense of ease and comfort with my brother. He was my drink of choice at the time.

When I was with him, I did not have to be, do, or say anything. I was comfortable being quiet and around older people. K? September 5, 1972, my brother died as a result of a head injury in a football scrimmage down in Massillon, Ohio. I come from a a long line of football playing people.

My father played at West Virginia State University. My uncle Beau played for Penn State University. I had 2 cousins, played in the NFL for over 10 years. 1 of them played for the Browns for 11 years. My My family do football.

That's what we do. That's what we've raised to do. And, my brother was going to Ohio State to play for Woody Hayes. And, we found out later he had a blood clot on the side of his brain. He got hit, laid in the scrimmage, it moved.

Doctor told us later he could have been walking across the street and it would have moved, and he would have dropped in. So the the it wasn't the game of football that killed my brother. K? It wasn't God that killed my brother. There's a blood clot inside his brain.

After my brother was gone, and and obviously, that was a very traumatic thing, not only for me, for my family, but for my entire time. And, I never talked about that until I took a 5th step in this program. I never talked to my mom and dad about it because my mom and dad was devastated, and I don't want them to have to worry about me. And, and I walked with that. My brother's gone and now start hanging around people my own age.

Guys, I've known since I'm 2 years old. I'm 13. I'm standing on the south side of Sandusky. Here's the topics of conversation amongst the crew that I ran with in 1972 at the age of 13. The the topics was drinking beer, smoking weed, and climbing in and out of girls' bedroom windows in the middle of the night.

And I was back 0 to 0. I had a brother that did not play that. I would have had no idea what it was if it had came up and slapped me. But do I tell people I don't know what they're talking about? Absolutely not.

Do you remember them dogs they used to put in the back window of the car with the head and go like this? That's me. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I know what you're talking about.

Yep. Yep. Yeah. I was over there. Yeah.

I know them. I'm 13 years old. I'm a liar faking the phony. I'm telling people I've been places I ain't been. I've done things I haven't done, and I know people that I don't know in order to gain their acceptance.

No. I am willing to compromise everything that I've been taught and everything that I believe to be true to be to gain the acceptance of those around me. I have absolutely no sense of self at all. Empty on the inside. My mom used to talk to me a lot after my brother died.

She'd say things to me like, oh, Kenny, God been so good to you. You're gonna have a wonderful life. Blah blah blah blah blah. I used to tell my mother, I have no desire to be of service to god, you, or nobody else. Not that I didn't believe in god.

Not that I blame god for anything in my life. No. I had come to some conclusions, however. Okay? And that's what I told her.

I said, what I want out of life, I'll tell you real quick, I want mine. I wanna get it my way. And I'm gonna need you to leave me alone while I'm doing it because I ain't gonna do it like you do. My mother would get that sad look on her face and she said, oh, you don't get it? We didn't raise you that way.

I point my finger at her. I think you're the one who don't get it. Watch me roll. Selfish, self centered, self seeking, 13 years old. One of the gifts God did give me, I did well in school.

That's a gift. I did not study. I didn't work for it, and I didn't earn it. Therefore, it is a gift. K?

But what did I do? What if I took credit for it? That's a tone and tenor of my life though. If anything good, I'll take credit for it. If anything bad, I'm blaming you.

So I'm a straight a student. My sponsor, Bill, told me so when I come in the program, he says, son, he said, anytime you in a room alone, all your enemies are there. Okay? The way he was referred to, obviously, is my thinking. Alright?

So I'm sitting in a study hall. I'm about 14, 15 years old And I had a visit from the enemy, my thinking. And here's the thought that occurred to me that day. You know, these people in this study hall, breaking their neck trying to get b's and c's, taking general math and science. I, on the other hand, have taken calculus, physics, 4th year Latin, 4th year English.

I don't even take books home. I'm in the National Honor Society. You know, it just might be entirely possible that I know everything. Uh-huh. That laugh, but I see we got a few more frustrated geniuses in here tonight.

I had no evidence to support that thought as being true. I accepted it as a fact, and I left the room and I took action on it. I actually went home and stood in the middle of my mother's father's living room and I shared that discovery with him. What happened after that? I'll make a long story short.

If my mother was not as quick as she was and grabbed the back of my daddy's t shirt, you have a different speaker here tonight. I believe that man intended to strangle me that day. He came up off that couch. And all these years later, I'd never asked him about that. He had to be thinking, look what we got in our house.

I'm gonna end it now. Now my father is the guy that played football back in the days when they did not have face masks. I ran out the screen door. I closed it. My father ran up behind me.

This is what he said. He looked through the screen door. He pointed his finger at me. He said, boy, you have a hard life. And I stood on that screen door.

Outside that screen door, I looked through that screen door to him and I laughed in his face. Significant day in my life because on that day, I closed the door. K? In our book, it said honesty, open mindedness, and willingness of the 3 essential was recovered. The book said, yeah, they are indispensable.

That means I can't recover without those disfirmly greed. K? Now on that day, I closed my mind. From that day forward, everybody in my life, in my opinion, was an idiot. My mother, my father, the preacher, the teacher, later on, the police, the judges, the lawyers, the probation, the PO.

You can't tell me because if I don't know it, it ain't worth knowing. It became my philosophy of life. Selfie, self centered, self seeking, self absorbed according to my mother, me as a rattlesnake, I get to take a drink of alcohol. I tell people I was a perfectly killed soil for the disease of alcoholism. All I had to do was water.

And I got in the car with a guy one day. Bill's story, he said, Bill forgot the strong warnings and prejudices of his people concerning drink. Alcoholism don't run-in my family. It gallows. Junky head, look at junky head, look at budge, they all die in cirrhosis.

Stay away from that stuff. Okay? I got in the car with a guy named Johnny. Johnny was my best friend's older brother. We all played basketball in some dusty high school.

Johnny had a snazzy car, pocket full of money. He ran around with the kind of girls I ran away from. When I seen him coming down all, he was already known in the bars and the gambling spots. Everybody loved Johnny. I want Johnny's life.

See, I live in my head. Anybody else in here a dreamer? We watch TV. We read books, and we daydream to escape reality. See, I'm already seeking different avenues of escape from reality.

K. But I don't understand that yet. K. I always ask, we got any future mega millions winners in here? You already know where you're gonna live when you hear God.

Yeah. Yeah. Then you can relate to me. Alright? So I got in the car with Johnny, and Johnny said to me, hey, come on.

Let's get something to drink. If Johnny had said to me, I did. That's what Rob would carry out. I absolutely guarantee you that I would have done it. That's a little sense of self that I had.

That's how empty I am on the inside. I am closed spiritually. We went through the drive through. We bought 10 ports of Slissmall Liquor Bowl. You know how it is when you're young.

How much liquor do you buy? How much money do you have? We should as much as we can get for this amount of money is what we want. We got them 10 ports. Johnny put the convertible top down on his car.

We rolled through the streets of Sandusky, and we drank that beer and my life changed. I try to put this as simple as possible. On that day, I started drinking. I started growing. You started shrinking.

I went from shy, insecure and afraid. To bold, confident, suave, debonair, and fearless in about 20 minutes. In the doctor's opinion, they said we drink what? Essentially, for the effect produced by alcohol. I didn't particularly care for the taste of warm Schlitz Bull.

If I drink the taste, I like Minute Maid fruit punch. I like all that taste. But you know what? I ain't never drink a case of Minute Maid fruit punch in a day. Right?

I drink for the effect that produces something in me. Let let me put you like this. For the first time on that day, I felt whole. I felt on the inside like you looked on the outside. And I ain't one of them people.

A lot of people say that when I drank, I became a part of the crowd. That's not my experience. My experience is this. When I drank that day, I owned the crowd. They got guys like me in every peer group.

They call them jerks. We went behind the Derek Apartments in Sandusky where all the thoughts hung up. People surrounded the car. The convertible thought was down. The music was blasting.

I turned. I looked at Johnny, and I said, turn that music down because there's a few things I wanna tell a few people who are present here this afternoon that I have been wanting to tell them for quite some time. Now that might not be a big deal, but here's the deal. I hadn't said 5 words in public in the last 3 years. Johnny turned that music down and I went around that circle of hoodlums.

And not only did I tell each and every one of them what I thought of them, but also what they needed to do, in my opinion, to improve themselves. How did them people react? I'll tell you how they reacted. Guys are leaning over in the convertible and hugging me. And they said, see, I told you, Coleman's alright.

He's one of the boys. He's loose enough. He's drinking a little beer. Man, burned into my brain. I made a mental note of that.

When I drink, I now gain the acceptance of the people whose acceptance I want the most. It changes me. It changes how I see me, how I see you, and how I see the world at large. K? Alcohol equals success.

We left from there. We went up to the home with so many girls he run around with. I run away from. I walked into that home like I was paying the mortgage. Never been in there in my life.

I went in the dining room, and I sat down. And I looked across the dining room at a girl, who I believe is the prettiest girl to graduate Kentucky High School in this 157 year history. I had never even breathed in her direction. Once I said hello And I looked over there at her and she looked up at me and I said, come here. And she got up and she started walking toward me.

Now, any sane human being at this point would probably think, hey, Kent. You know what? If you weren't so shy and scared, look what you coulda did just by speaking up. You know what I mean? That's what normal did.

Is that what I thought? No. Here's what I thought. If you had been drinking before now, look what you could have done. Look what you've been missing.

Alcohol made this possible. Alcohol equal success. Burned into my brain. Now this is another program. I'm a be honest with you tonight.

So when she got over there to me, I had no idea what to do with her. But guys like me, we watch a lot of TV. Alright? So I did what they do on TV. I went like this.

And she sat down in my lap and my life changed again. And the bottom line for this whole thing is on that day, alcohol did for me what I could not or would not do for myself. K. That's bottom line. Absolute magic.

I couldn't believe that I had waited this long to do this. You know, doctor Jekyll and mister Hyde, you know, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote it was an alcoholic. K. The magic potion was alcohol, ladies and gentlemen. And on that day, I found the magic potion.

Now I am a consequences drinker. Now a lot of people come to AA. They ain't lost job, got DUIs, you know, been divorced, been homeless, none of that, been to jail or that. And it's not necessary, is it? Okay?

You can get off the elevator at any floor. That stuff is not necessary. However, that is not my experience. If this here was a drink of alcohol and I stood here and took a sip, a cop would drop right out of that light. Look, I gotta tell you, man.

This is my experience. You know? I gotta find you, man. This is my experience, you know. My father said to me, I was about 25 years old.

He said, I don't see anything like this, mama. He said, you can't get from the end of the corner. It's like you got a cop manning on your butt. I keep an AA and there was a guy, John c. You got John Cunningham.

God, he's gone now. John got sober in 1946. He looked at me. He said, Kent, great trouble. Great trouble.

I said, no kidding. No kidding. What happened to me that day? You know, I didn't go to jail. Yeah.

I blacked out. I have no idea what went on the rest of the night. According to eyewitnesses at the house, I heard all this the next day. I came in the front door, threw up a trail through the house. My grandfather fell on the floor laughing back in the family room.

I went in the bathroom, hit everything but the toilet. The next thing I remember is my mother knocking on my bedroom door. Come out here and clean this so you know you've been drinking. You know, blah blah blah blah blah. Stagger into the hallway and what later years would be my drinking uniform, my underwear.

I'm bouncing off the hallway walls. You know them narrow hallway walls. Got a hangover you can take out and I it's alive. I'm dying. I want a bathroom.

She's still screaming in the hallway. I locked the bathroom door. I put my hands on the bathroom sink. I looked through bloodshot eyes into the mirror, and this is what I said, man oh man. I cannot wait to do that again.

Grounded for life is what was being discussed in the living room and how they were gonna carry that out. I'm grounded for life. I got no more. So why do I wanna do it again? The reason is simple, ain't it?

Because alcohol equals pats on the back, girls in my lap. Alcohol did for me what I couldn't do for myself. Alcohol equals success and Kent was gone. And I never looked back. I can't I don't have any prolonged periods of sobriety to share with you when things got bad.

I'm the kind of drunk that when things get bad, I drink more. I'm the kind of guy who drinks to feel better about problems caused by his drinking. I'm a guy who cannot see the forest full of trees. K? I'm the kind of guy they don't send me to treatment.

They put me in straight jackets. I show up to court facing my 5th DUI, drunk. For me, alcohol was not a problem. If there's a problem, you the problem. You the one who called the police on me.

See, alcohol is an answer for guys like me. It's an answer. And see, I drink and I have problems in my life as a result of my drinking. So I feel worse, so I drink even more. And I and I have more problems in my life because of my drinking, and I drink even more.

And it's like being on a fair Ferris wheel, man. And there ain't nobody to shut it off. That's how active alcoholism was in my life. I kept doing the same thing over and over and over for 18 years. And as my alcoholism progressed, my behavior got progressively worse.

16 years old, I get a car. My mother says to me, be home at 1 o'clock. I come home at 2. She grounds me. Then I come home at 3.

She grounds me. We do this every 3 weeks. I'm grounded every 2 weeks. Finally, I come home. It's 4:20 in the morning.

Never forget it. Walked in the front door. I'm 16 years old. My mother's sitting on the couch. She got tears running down her face.

See, we talk a lot about child abuse in society. You're looking at a parent abuser. I walked in the into the living room. My mother got tears coming down her face. It's 4:20 in the morning.

I'm 16 years old. This is what she said to me. Kenny, as your parents, we owe you a roof over your head, food to eat, clothes on your back, and an education. We have fulfilled our part of the bargain. She said, well, buddy, I got something you can't have.

And she said, that's my peace of mind. She said, Kenny, you're going to the penitentiary or the cemetery. You're not taking me with you. I'm done. Go do what you want, Kenny.

I'm done. I stood in the living room. I looked at my mom and this is what I see. I broke you. I broke you.

And you know what? It wasn't even hard. And I walked away. It's a snapshot of Kent at the age of 16. I graduated high school.

In the 12 and 12, I said, that's the whole thing with patience credit. When I read a literature, I have to ask myself, what does that mean to me in here? Rapacious predator. See, until Bill's story becomes Kent's story, it's just recreational reading to me. Rapacious creditor means nonstop paper.

See, I can't see one of the baffling features of this disease I suffer from is that you can't see what it's doing to you till you free up. Looking in the rear view mirror, I could tell you all this stuff that happened when it was going on. I couldn't tell you nothing. Okay? Arguments in my house.

Tell you how this argument is simple. My drinking did. I I went to college. I went to Miami, Ohio. I graduated from high school.

1 of the best schools in the country. Not until my mother and father when I got my letter of acceptance from mine, because I got the grades to get in there, and I didn't ask to be born, so you should pay. Snapshot of camp, age 17. It's kinda cute I was. When my parents took me to school on that Sunday, all the freshmen coming, what do you see?

Parents hugging the kids. Right? Baby leaving home for the first time. Tears everywhere. If you was watching my family that day, that's not what you saw.

My father unloaded that van like his butt was on fire. Then it was up by I75 before I got my key in the door room door. I kid you not. You know what my father said to me when he got going down the steps? Now your mother can sleep.

Now your mother can sleep. From the day I picked up the tree see, by the time I'm in my late teens, something has happened. See, as a youngster, I had some goals and aspirations and dreams. K. And I and I and I crafted activities around my life to support that.

I went to school. I hung out with the right people. You know, I did extra work. You know, I played ball. I did all those things that would support those golf.

Somewhere in my late teens, a change took place. K. Those goals, aspirations, and dreams that was at the center. What was at the center changed? And what was in the center now was drinking.

And I've constructed activities around that to support k. The people that are hung out with are people who drink like me. My mother used to say, what about Johnny? You don't see him no more? I know.

He got a job. You know what? Johnny don't wanna be with me no more, and I don't wanna be with him because he don't drink like I drink. So my acquaintances are now what? Dictated by my drinking.