The Northern Plains Group in Fargo, ND

That's good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Paul Morton's an alcoholic,

yet I have not taken a drink since May 5th of 2001.

And I always like to say that's due to a grace of due to the grace of a God that will never help me. Sponsorship that should not be trusted in a simple program of action. That's never going to work.

And I I tend to be a bit of a skeptic and I don't believe it until I see it happen a couple of times. And even then, I'm still kind of not certain how they really got the results, and I'm inclined to stand back and watch.

What's different about that is when I come to Alcoholics Anonymous, I had something that you can't get

in Walmart, you can't get it at the courthouse, you can't get it. You can't get it in treatment. You can't get it from your mom, your dad, your cousin, your dog, your cat, or anybody else. I had what they call desperation. I was just that damn desperate. I came here to you. I, I'd like to say by accident, but I think it's a moment of grace. I think that there are points in my life where it's coincidence, where it's accident, where I didn't intend for something to happen. And for me,

I've come to believe that there's moments in my life where there's there's a God out there who I knew was never going to help me because of the things I did in the way that I lived in the stuff that I did.

And yet he was there doing it anyway. And I've come to believe that the word grace isn't something I deserve or something that I earn or something. And I go pick up anywhere. Grace is a gift that is given for no good reason, something that's not earned. You can't buy it, you can't find it. It's something that's given for no reason at all. And I think that it's based on love. And I think that that's what a A is all about. Is it about it? It's about us being together here and, and we've gotten through something together

that that we can't get through and we can't get through it by ourselves.

People die from this all the time, you know, and it's not something that

thousands of years people were having alcoholism, you know, and we weren't able to get over that. Somehow somewhere out of nowhere, I think God must have just kind of felt sorry for us and said, you know, we're going to have to give these guys something. And he gave us this.

When I say I'm alcoholic, what that means to me. Couple of things, Couple of things. You know, First off, when I drink, I get thirsty. You know, Alcoholics Anonymous calls at the phenomenon of craving. When I drink, I want another drink. And every time I take a drink, I want another drink and I want another drink. And once I start, I don't know where I'm going to stop. It's going to be 16121425, whatever,

you know, and the odds are relatively high that I'm going to be throwing up one more time tonight.

I also have a thing called the obsession of the mind. The obsession of the mind is the part of my brain that's constantly lying to me, telling me that I can safely drink, that I can have a drink, that I can have a couple, that this time it's worth it, it's OK that I can have one. I should, I could, I ought to. Because of her, because of that or because of this, I got the job, lost the job, found, you know, found her, lost her, whatever. I always come up with some reason why it's OK for me to take a drink. And once I take the drink, I get thirsty. The more I drink, the more thirsty I get, the more I drink and I'm sick again. And I wake up the next morning with a firm resolve to knock that off and cut it out and not do that again.

And guess what? My brain keeps talking to me. And it wasn't until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous has anybody ever described that. You know, I mean, I had a lot of people tell me about your drinking, you know, pointing the finger. You're drinking. And if you, if you did, if you did this, if you didn't do that and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, it was like the Charlie Brown episode. Want what want, what? Want, want, want, want, want. You know, I'm not hearing anything. It's like you don't understand. You don't know what it feels like. You don't get it. You know, you don't know what this does for me.

So I'm alcoholic. I can't safely drink and I can't not drink. Those are the two things I think that qualify me as an alcoholic.

I did a lot of drugs. Drugs are a part of my story simply because I planned on being a not being a drunk like my mom. So I started out on non addictive marijuana.

I guess we got arrested for that a couple times because it was not addictive and I didn't have to do it. That's why I was dealing it so that I could, you know, support my habit. But really, I mean, I, I don't consider myself an addict because given a good enough reason, I stopped. I mean, I got in trouble one time too many and I had too much to lose. I didn't, I didn't do it anymore. I just, I cut it out and I was able to do that

and yet given reason after reason after reason after reason, I could not stop drinking. So

it's water.

So

I'm not going to give you a long drunk log. I'll not give you the story, the war stories, the misery, the pain and the hurt. Bottom line, you all know how you got here. My story might be different than yours, but most of us don't come wandering at Alcoholics Anonymous because things are going well. There was a her, there was a lot of stuff going on. It was in the middle of a divorce. There was a lot of problems and and there was a lot of stuff that I was very emotional about because I'm too damn tough to have any emotion other than rage and fine. And so I couldn't put a finger on,

you know, it's terror and bewilderment, frustration and despair.

I didn't know those words. I knew them. I'd read them in books, but I couldn't put it to my situation. I didn't get it. And I wandered into Alcoholics Anonymous because the night before there was this girl and we got into a fight and I threw stuff around. I broke stuff. I tackled her. We got into a wrestling match. I slapped her on the rear end three times with a flat hand, which for me, that's hitting a woman. I don't care how you dress that up. You don't strike woman in anger. And that's what I did. And that's what I saw in the mirror the next morning. And I just knew. I'm a drunk. I've been a drunk for a long time. I'm a violent, angry, rageful, frightened person with nothing left in the world. And the reason to

what the Hell's the point, you know? And the next day when she came back, she said that her and her friend Keith were going to be going to a dance. It was an, a, a dance. And I could go if I wanted to. I thought, oh Christ, you know, a, a Anna dance. I mean, I don't dance, you know, not because I can't dance, but because I won't dance. Because if I get out there and I dance, you're going to see that I feel awkward and vulnerable. And if you notice that you're going to stop, the whole room's going to turn, laugh and point. The earth is going to open up and swallow me. And

psychologists like say I have anxiety attacks.

Bottom line for me, what it is a self-centered fear. I am absolutely terrified that you're going to be able to see through the thin little disguise that I've been able to throw up between me and you got a little bit of buffer that I used to try and make me tough. Whether it was my leather jacket, ponytail and a long goatee or whether it was in the 80s, the fashionet shirts and the cut off shirts and the ripped up jeans. And

so

whatever it is, it's all just image. My desperate attempt to be something other than what I feel like is always out there trying to show you something that I'm not because I'm afraid if you see what I am, it'll all be over, you know? And I didn't know that that was the answer. I came into Alcoholics Anonymous and I heard someone describe from the podium what it's like when I drink and what it's like when I don't. The, the desperation and frustration of, of sobriety, you know, and how painful that that is for me. I didn't know that other people knew about that.

And

the best way I've heard it described, for me, sobriety is like being underwater. It's like being underwater and I can see the surface and I need to breathe and I know that I need to breathe, but I'm not going to go there. I'm not. I'm not. And that's me fighting a drink. And the longer I'm underwater, the more desperate I get and the more frustrated I get and the further the water surface seems to be until I finally crack and say, forget it in my surface.

And I feel like, OK, I'm going to be OK. I'm going to be OK. And that kind of goes away pretty quickly, you know, because the more I drink, the worse it gets. And so I came into Alcoholics Anonymous. And I was lucky enough that first meeting that I was at that there was a person there who shared their experience, not what they know. They shared their experience. They shared their story. They gave me their experience. And they told me where they got their strength and how they got their strength. And that gave me a little bit of hope. You know, they didn't. They didn't.

Luckily, I sobered up with a person in Alcoholics Anonymous who was talking about their experience. I didn't sober up at, say, a joint Charlie book study because I would have gone into that with the amount of intelligence and knowledge and wisdom and religion that I had in here. And I would have been able to take apart everything you said, call you a liar, blasphemer and a fake, and walk out of here and get drunk, you know? So I had people sharing their experience and that's a big deal to me.

And I can't take credit for any of this stuff either, because, you know, there's a,

a good way to put it. There's a story about this guy. He's in this book I read a long time ago. For the sake argument, we'll call him Moses. And

he was he was given a job to take these people and lead them out of this place. And he gets them out in the desert and they get lost and everybody's mad at him. And what happens is the laundry is out there are more annoyed he becomes with his people. And the more he wishes he didn't have this job. He's like, this is terrible. These people are jerks. And and the longer he's doing it, the more annoying they get and the more irritating they get. And he finally gets to this point where the people are coming to him saying, Hey, we want water, we want water. He's like

goes in his tent. He's like, God, these people want water. You know, what do I do? God says we'll go out there and talk to that rock and

it'll give you water. And this guy goes out there and in his moment of arrogance and self-righteous indignation,

hits the rock with his stick and effectively says, do I have to do everything for you people?

And that was the one thing that kept him out of the quote UN quote promised land in this book, you know, and I have to watch out for that. I have a density develop that Moses complex. I have a tendency to come in here and decide that it's my job to take apart a A and what you're doing and straighten you out and show you how to do it right, You know, and the truth is, is that he's been doing hit wrong for, you know, quite a number of years and they're doing it quite successfully. We're 2 million strong. You know, we've got a success rate that is phenomenal where the largest spiritual movement on the face of the earth. You know, I mean,

this is a lot of stuff going on here. And the reason is, is because there's nobody. Well, there are some people, but most of us aren't getting each other's face all the time telling each other how to do it right. What we do is we share our experience and out our knowledge

and So what I've learned to do is live sober. I've learned to be comfortable in the world and comfortable with my sobriety and comfortable with most of your sobriety. I get a little self-righteous here and there. If you haven't had your evangelistic streak yet, wait for it. It's a good time,

but I found it for me. I mean,

the only medallion I carry on, we'd carry around these little brass medallions. A lot of us do. It's the only one I've got is this little 24 hour medallion. Because for me in this life, what I've got here and now is no longer having to stay sober forever. I never quit drinking. Think on that. I didn't quit drinking. I just didn't drink for today. I didn't drink for today and I didn't drink for today. One more day and I didn't drink for today. One more day, May 5th, 2001, I had my last drink and I put down the last drink and I've been coming here and being with you people since then. You know, what I have is right here and now and I've come up with this,

this description that I like and

I'll share it with you because

it's hard to describe,

but the way I see it,

a lot of people, I mean, everybody, everybody, that's one of the movies, right? Everybody likes going to the movies. I like one of the movies. When you go to the movie theater, you sit in there and this magic happens and transports you to another world, another reality. And life is beautiful and everything is great and it's wonderful. There's good, there's bad, there's happy, there's laughter and tears. Everything is beautiful. And I'll tell you how that works and why that works. What happens is that they've got this movie projector in the back and on the front of it, it's got this big supply reel supplying all of this film that's going through all these little wheels and cogs. And it's going behind this lens past this light bulb. And it threw a bunch more wheels and cogs in

take up rail. And as it's being supplied, there's one little piece in there, this light bulb that's constantly flashing on only one picture at a time. Nothing but that. Just that it doesn't care what's happening next. It doesn't care how it gets there. It doesn't care what happens after it gets there, and it doesn't care about what happened in the past right here and now. It's flashing on that moment over and over and over again. And you know what? That's where the magic is. That's where the movie is. That's where the beauty is, that's where life is.

And if you want your life to be like the movies, the best possible thing you can do

is learn to get right here and now. At the very end of Bill's story, there's a line in there where he says exactly that. We feel we need to look no further for utopia. We have it with us right here and now. And when I can get right here and now in the middle of life, you know, with you in this world and a part of this, and engage in the principles in this book. I mean, working the steps, it's not something you stand up and talk about. You know, I worked all 12 steps. I got involved in the steps. Thankfully I didn't have a sponsor that told me some nonsense like, well, once you found God, I'll take you through the steps.

Thank God nobody like Bill W said. Maybe to Doctor Bob. I'll take you through the steps when I think you're ready.

We wouldn't have an Alcoholics Anonymous today. He said, here's what I did. If you want what I've got, let's do it. And he took him into it and he took him into this process. Now, you know, and thankfully he didn't tell him, well, you wait until you're ready. Well, you take the time you want, you know, work that inventory when you feel like it. And, you know, he said, let's get involved in this process. And he took him through the process. And as a result, Doctor Bob recovered from alcoholism. And when I say recovered from alcoholism, I'm not going to get into any kind of debate over that. What I have is recovered from the obsession of drink. The obsession of

is gone. It's been gone for a long time. And that goes away as a result of work in the 12 steps. The 12 steps bring on a spiritual experience. It changes the way that I see the world and it makes it so that I don't have to drink. I don't want to drink. You know, when I came here, I didn't know what it was like to not want to drink. I heard people talk about it. I thought they were bizarre, you know, and didn't make any sense to me to not want to drink. Everybody wants to drink, you know, And my way was the only normal one. And I couldn't differentiate the truth from the false, you know, and

what I've gotten here

is relieved of the obsession of drink. It's gone, you know, And as a result of work in the spiritual principles and the 12 steps, little by little, other parts of my life come together. You know, not because AA makes me wonderful, but because if I want to stay sober, I have to stay honest. And if I'm going to stay honest, I have to find out where I'm being dishonest. I have to figure out where I'm being inconsiderate and where I'm full of resentment and fear. You know, I have to determine whether or not my sex conduct is appropriate for me to not feel guilt, shame and remorse every day, you know? And so as I go through the inventory and I take a look at this stuff, I discovered there's

stuff about me that I didn't like. And once we discussed that with another person, I had to decide to myself, am I willing to let go of these things that I find objectionable? And the truth was, at that time, Nope, Nope. I was having a really good time. My, my first sponsor, the late, great Kane Thompson, told me once that when I when I got my one year cake, he said that he could count the number of suggestions I didn't take on one hand. And it was Amanda and Heather and Renee and Bobby Joe. And

not that there's anything wrong with that.

We're not the arbiter of anyone's sex conduct, you know, I mean, it's a matter of whether you're willing to grow and change spiritually. I was not, I was having a very good time. And at the time I did my, I did my fifth step and I was, I was balking at my 6th step. I was having a fling with this. This girl looked look a lot like a porn star, you know, Ron Jeremy. And

yeah, that was money. And it was one day I just, I kind of woke up and I thought, you know, what the hell? I'm trying to grow, I'm trying to change, I'm trying to get better. And what the hell is this? And I had what I consider to be a moment of grace, you know, a moment of grace. And there's, I think everybody has a period of grace.

You know, if you're new and you come in here and before you've worked the steps, you start to get a zeal and an enthusiasm for Alcoholics Anonymous and you're charged and you're involved in the meetings and you're running around doing everything you can and you want to get into this process. Don't let anybody feed you any crap about it being a pink cloud, OK? I think that that's a moment of grace. That's a period of grace that God gives the Alcoholics who are willing to go to any lengths to get this. I think that's that period of time where God gives you the opportunity to be sober and happy about being sober just long enough to get your ass into the steps

so that you don't have to drink before you get there.

Use it, get involved in it, stay involved in that, get involved in the steps. Don't walk out of here, don't run out of here and don't let anybody bully you out of here. There's a bunch of jackasses in a A that's a problem with a A is it's full of Alcoholics, a bunch of hard willed, obnoxious, pushy people. And every single one of them is absolutely certain they're right. You know, so love and tolerance of others is our code And, and it's, it's, it's a lot of fun. I mean, if you can, if you can develop a little bit of a sense of humor about this and have a little bit of fun about your recovery,

you know, have fun with this because it is. I mean, look, we should all be dead. We should not be here. Alcoholics of my type don't live long enough to clean up, put on a suit, cut my hair, you know, and walk around like I care about anything. You know, there's a whole bunch of us running around here cleaned up. Looking halfway is good. Most of us anyway. And sorry, Sam, and

I'm just playing. So, you know, And that right there, that right there, there was 100 and 5200 alcoholic, potentially deadly dead people laughing all at the same time.

That's God in the room to me. You know, that's where the magic is to me, that moment. And I'm going to hang on to that. I'm going to hang on to that for the rest of the day. I'll probably think about it a couple times over the next few days because when I came here, I wasn't laughing, you know, I was not having a good time. I was not enjoying myself. I wanted to die and I was too scared to kill myself. What do you do with that? So get involved in the step work. I finally at that point with that girl, decided I was sick and tired of this and called up my sponsor and said, what do I do? And he told me the page to turn to. He told me the two paragraphs to read and he told me the prayer to read and I did it

and nothing happened.

I was a little disappointed and I called him up and said nothing happened. What do I do? He said your 8th step,

He said go to your four step, which I still had. I didn't burn it. Some people do, some people don't. Not my job to tell you how to do this. I can only tell you how I did it because it's not my place to tell you what you should do. It's only my place to tell you my experience. So what I did, I still have that fourth step and I still go back over that from time to time. Look and see if there's any new amends on there that I've missed or anything that I can do. And I took that and I made a miss a list of people that I needed to talk to

and there was a lot of them because I'm a Jackass and I I lie, I gossip, I steal, I burglarize my dad's house for thousands of dollars of guns and sold them on the streets of Spokane for 100 bucks and bought acid. You know,

that's a hard load. You know, and there was a lot of other stuff on. There was one page in particular of of things that I didn't want to write them down. I'm not going to write these things down. I can't write these things down. You know, I've been trying for years, some of these since I was five years old, seven years old, trying to get away from some of these things. And as I was doing this inventory, little voice popped in my head, said, what do you think you're running from, Paul?

So I wrote this stuff down and Elvin, because I'd been years ago studying Tolkien's handwriting in the back of the The Lord of the Rings books, and

I didn't want anybody to find out exactly what these things said. So

if it works, you know, and when I started talking to these people that I'd hurt and these people that I'd harmed, and I started going to them and talking to them about, you know, not I'm sorry. In fact, I was told by one of my spiritual teachers, this lady that came to this meeting, I don't know if she's here anymore. But Mari one time said to me, you know, people don't want to hear. I'm sorry. We've been saying I'm sorry for years. People want to hear I was wrong. What can I do to make it right? And if you already know what you did wrong, you shouldn't even have to ask what you need to do to make it right. You know, I already know what I did. If I stole money,

I owe you money. If I lied about you, I need to go around and try and improve your reputation. I need to say kind things about people. I need to try and undo the damage, the wreckage and the chaos that I've left in my wake for so many years. That's a little by little. I'm going around to co-workers and taking them aside. I'm an alcoholic. I'm in a 12 step program of recovery and I need to try to make amends. And they they had what? Bill Wilson talked about his banker having that look of amused skepticism.

Yeah, but I quit talking about people behind their back and letting people know about it. I still do sometimes, but I'm getting better at it.

You know, I think if I'm honest, every single character defect I had when I came in here is still here. The difference is, is that much like alcohol, I've been given a choice. I don't have to lie today. I don't have to cheat today. I don't have to gossip today. I can. And for the record, gossip is anytime you talk about somebody that's not in the room, think on that. You know, that for me is that's a character defect I still have. And there's a lot of this stuff that little by little I'm improving my actions, but it's not my job to work on my character defects. Or step seven would say we worked on our defects instead of we asked God to.

And what God's done is He's removed that absolute need to do those things, and He's giving me back a moment of grace, a moment of choice that couple of seconds before I act out that character defect.

So I made these amends. And today what I do is I try my very darn best

to live by those principles. Step 10 is basically 4 through 9 over and over and over again, all day long, over and over. You know, I continue to look for what am I doing wrong? Am I lying? Am I full of resentment, fear, frustration, selfish, dishonest? What's going on? You know, any time I'm disturbed is because there's something wrong with me and I need to get undisturbed before I can approach the problem. And I need to continue to make amends. I had an issue with a, a certain company here in town recently. Who? Who,

in my opinion, still wronged me considerably. And that doesn't give me the right to hang up on them. That doesn't give me the right to snap at them on the phone. That doesn't give me the right to be rude.

And So what I had to do is even though they were 99% of the problem and mostly wrong, as I called them up and said, what do I need to do to make this right? And they said apologize. And rather than say for what, I said, okay, to whom? And she gave me a phone number of a guy that I needed to call. And she said, if you could give me a written apology, I can give to the people that I don't have their phone numbers when I see them, that would be nice. And so I did and I wrote it up and I emailed it to her. I called the guy and he never did call me back. I called him several times and he never called me back. I've done my part. My side of the street is clean. That's what I can do

and that's all I can do is try and keep my side of the street clean. I continue to talk to the God of my understanding, a lack of understanding. The longer I do this, the less I seem to know. And I came here. I was full of religion. I was full of a lot of religion. I had all of the answers and I could pull out a Bible and prove any one of you bastards wrong, anyone of you. And I was very combative about it and I've come to find it. For me, in my personal case, religion is not a good deal. It's not a good idea for me. I talked to a God 1020 times a day. I have a relationship with my God that

that I take with me on the way to work. I don't say, OK, God, I'm going to work. I'll see you when I get home. And I take God with me to work. And I do, you know, on my lunch breaks, he's with me and on the way home he's with me. And when I go to meetings and I went home for meetings, when I go to pick up my kids, I try and bring my God with me when I do that stuff. I try to work with other Alcoholics, you know, and I try to sponsor guys. And I've had a lot of fun sponsoring guys because

Bill C out in California said something about this, that every time I think of some person that I really don't want to work with, they walk across the room and ask me for help.

And every single character defect that I have ever noticed in myself has wound up asking me to sponsor them. And it has been my pleasure to do so. I love doing that. I love working with other Alcoholics because that's that's where the fun is for me. That's where the fun of this whole thing is for me is when I sit down and talk to another drunk, whether it's over a coffee table or whether it's from one couch to another couch or whether we're driving in a vehicle. When I'm talking to another drunk and I'm seeing the lights come on in their eyes and they're starting to get it. And I see them starting to nod when I'm talking about something. Yeah, we got you,

gotcha. When you're laughing at the jokes we tell in here, we got you. You bet. And you never have to drink again. You don't have to drink again. You don't have to feel so damn miserable sober. You know, if you want to drink, half at it. We're not here to convince anyone they want to drink. Go for it. If you don't want to drink anymore and you find that you can't stop, welcome home. Because this is where we have a solution to that type of problem. That's what we do here.

I think that another thing that is grievously often missed in a A is when people run around talking about how militantly busy they are. 12 stepping

and they're completely missing the second-half. I try to practice these principles in all my affairs. So when I hold the door for somebody at the grocery store and let them through, I'm also practicing the 12th step. When I don't run that jerk off or cut me off in traffic and I don't run them off the road, I'm practicing the 12th step.

My first sponsor, Kane one time said that I was real new in sobriety and I was on my way to the meeting. I got to the meeting. I was just nuts, you know? And he was, he was a little frustrated and he was talking about how on the way to the meeting, some guy had cut him off in traffic.

And he was just that close to flipping the guy the middle finger, giving him the old one finger salute. And ha ha, you jerk. And he caught himself again, that moment of grace, caught himself and thought, you know,

if I flip him the bird in 10 minutes, I'm going to probably feel pretty darn guilty about that.

I'm going to have to track that guy down and make amends for being such a jerk to him because I was wrong. And why in hell would I want to track someone down to make amends to them when they were the one that did the thing wrong? Screw that. And he didn't flip him off. And it was like a spiritual awakening. I just thought, you can do that. You can just not flip somebody off.

I had no idea, you know, and I don't think I flipped a whole lot of people off since that, except maybe Steve W and Howard and, you know, a couple of my friends. But that's nothing to love, you know. So I mean, this is a lot of fun. I have a lot of fun in Alcoholics Anonymous who people in my family, a lot of you people are closer to me than a lot of my family members are. Don't get me wrong, I love them. You know, my brother sobered up about four years ago and he and I have gotten a hell of a good relationship, you know, and we don't get to see each other much, but we get online on the Internet and we get to play in Halo together and shooting bad guys and having a blast and we

cut it up and we have a good time, you know, and we don't make it serious. Well, sometimes, but mostly it's just about having a good time and being selling and planned, you know? And when we're not winning, we take turns and start shooting barrels instead. And the other team just hits and looks at us like, what the hell? We're not trash talking anybody. We're not insulting people or swearing. We're just playing.

I have a relationship with my kids today. I have a relationship with my kids. And sometimes that's a little bit difficult because they're kids and I need you guys to stick around here because there's about a 5050 chance either one of them is going to wind up here. And

what I've, what I've told my ex-wife in the past is if they've got what's wrong with me, I can't help them. I can't, I'm too close to the problem. And if it got some other than what's wrong with me, I can't help them. I'm not qualified. What I get to do is I get to try and be a dad. I get to try and love them through whatever Jack fool thing they do and try and be a father and try and be there for them. You know, I get to learn to love unconditionally. And if you're sitting here and you're resenting anybody, if you're hating anybody, if there's someone in your mind that you're sitting there thinking, this is the one person I cannot forget,

or the one place or the one institution or the one whatever that I cannot forgive. Get to thinking about who you were when you came in here. Get to thinking about your 4th step and the things that you wanted to write in Elvin. And if I can come in here and through the grace of God, be forgiven for the crap that I did and the way that I lived and the people that I hurt, who am I to say that nobody else should be forgiven, right? So I'm glad to be here tonight. I'm glad to be an alcoholic because it means there's something that can be done about what's wrong with me. And I want to thank all of you for sitting through this.

Have a good night.