The Aberdeen Wednesday Night Group's Soberstock Roundup in Aberdeen, SD

Good afternoon. My name is Jeff Van Lanningham and I'm an alcoholic.

Due to the grace of God, actions in A and sponsorship, my sobriety date is March 16, 1992.

Very, very happy to say that this mic is kind of odd.

I want to thank the committee for asking me here. I I certainly appreciate it and it's nice to be back up in in my neck of the woods, if you will. I want to thank Don for leading the meeting. Don's my kind of alcoholic. He

immediately proceeds to veer off of the format and then after a couple minutes of that says I'm going to try not to veer off the format. And

I've always had kind of this shoot first aim later mentality towards life that gets me into a lot of trouble. So I identify and I hope I say something helpful in this talk that will curb that resentment.

I I Don did say something, though, He said I want to be where you're at, and I would concur that opinion. I I certainly want to be where you're at because this is the one thing that I have ever found that seems to work for what is wrong with me. I'm sometimes I like to you know, it's a funny thing about alcoholism and I don't know what the breakout, if we have any Al anons here or whatnot, but I'm assuming most people here are in A

and if you are, and if you have alcoholism, that means you have a disease that our book tells us is rooted in selfishness and self centeredness rooted in it. So think about that. We have a group of individuals here who for the most part are only concerned about themselves,

and supposedly we help each other, but only because I get a benefit from it. I'll help you to ensure immunity that I don't take that drink and I'm not going to do it unless I'm getting something for it. I think that's kind of a shallow way to describe alcoholic synonymous sometimes because I think that when we get together and when we are gathered, there seems to be this power, this spirit that you can literally sometimes feel it in the air.

And what is that? If we are selfish and self-centered by nature, if all we care about is ourselves, then why then when we get together do we feel this electricity in the air? I've come to believe, and I know that Bill Wilson used to talk about it, that Alcoholics have a, a deep seated belief to see and desire to see each other succeed. Not because I benefit in any way shape or form. I just want to see a fellow

get out. I want to see a fellow sufferer find a way to pull themselves up and make it. Because we understand each other as few do. We understand the hopelessness and the despair and the pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization

that we've all been through, and we want to see each other succeed. And I think if you know where to look, sometimes you can start to see that ethics shine through in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I don't know if we have anyone here, but if we had anyone here was celebrating a sobriety, I can assure you that this place would erupt into applause. And the lower the birthday, the more enthusiastic the applause. If somebody had a year, they just, we go crazy and we're not clapping because I benefit in any way, shape or form. It's because I'm genuinely happy to see someone get this thing.

Why is it at my Home group? And I would bet yours that when someone gets up to read how it works or the traditions and they're stumbling and they're having a tough time, the applause are always a little louder for that person than someone who reads it. Florida State. Why? Because we appreciate the effort, because we all know how difficult it is to get up and do this thing sometimes. And I think the place where you can most see it, sobriety countdowns. And I'm oftentimes, I've been fortunate enough in the last few years, I tend to be sitting up here.

This is a really high stage by the way. I hope we don't fall. I could do serious injury to myself, but

during sobriety countdowns, as we go down, down, down, I like to watch the Alcoholics in the room as they scan the room because there's a glow about them and a look as we get down, you know, to one month and three weeks and two weeks.

And jeez, if we have somebody here with one day, we explode into a standing ovation. Why? Because we want to see each other succeed. And so I want to be here in Alcoholics Anonymous because this is the place I belong and you are the people that I belong with now. I didn't know that, of course, my entire life. I didn't aspire to join Alcoholics Anonymous when I was younger. Being an alcoholic wasn't even on my list of anything to

have known for a long time. And I want to make this very clear. I knew I was an alcoholic. I knew that. I don't mean it was a theory. I don't mean I thought maybe I wasn't. I knew that I wasn't, and that deep seated belief almost killed me. And the reason I knew I wasn't an alcoholic is that there's something else wrong with me. I have known that for a long time.

I have had problems long before I ever drank. I have had an emptiness about me that I could never describe. I'm going to lose my name tag so I'm just going to set it here for now. Apparently I grabbed the wrong 1 so it's probably good I'm taking it off

anyway. I've had an emptiness about me

and a loneliness about me, and sometimes I hear things and

I don't know if that's alcoholism, but

was that a cowbell?

Any more cowbell?

I don't know what I'm saying.

I, I've never felt right in my own skin and I've never been able to articulate this to anybody. I've never been able to come up and say, can I explain to you what's wrong? And perhaps you could help me because I never knew. I just knew I felt funny. I just knew I felt goofy and odd. And it seems like people get this manual on how to live life, the basic principles every human being needs to be a human being. And I don't have that book and I've never read it. And I, I spend a lot of time feeling like I'm standing on the outside of a bubble and you're all in the bubble and you at least, you know, you're in there. And I'm out here and I can't

figure out why. I spend a lot of time comparing the way I feel to the way you look and I never seem to come up. Nobody ever looks like I feel. And so I am terminally different and terminally unique and nobody has any of the problems that I have. I have a racy mind that just races uncontrollably and just analyzing everything and looking at everything and wondering what's going on. I'm wondering why people are knocking things over. I'm just all kinds of things. And you know, it's just always going and I can't seem to shut it off.

I'm extremely sensitive by nature.

Now, when I say that I am sensitive, I don't mean that somebody says, hey, Jeff, you're stupid. All that hurts my feelings. I'm sensitive. At least that would make sense. I mean, people saying things like, well, hello, Jeff, and how are you? Well, what the hell did and how are you mean exactly? What are you trying to imply? And, you know, I got to go sit down and analyze that

when I got into school, when I was in first grade, there was 21 of us. I'm not going to chronologically go through every grade, by the way,

I I say that because there might be people in the audience like me. It's like if this guy goes through every grade, I'm leaving at 7th I

but in the 1st grade there's 21 of us and it seemed to me, and this isn't of course what happened that everybody had paired up to be best friends. You and I'll be best friends. You 2 be best friends, you 2 be best friends and I kind of felt like the odd man out. Nobody was mean to me, nobody did anything. They were pleasant, they were nice, but I hadn't connected with anyone like everyone else seemed to do. And you know, again felt I'll at ease and out of place and anxious. That's another thing. It was always anxious about things except I didn't know what I would get. Waves of guilt and I

not know what I'd done yet. Like I almost said, this premonition I'm sure I'm going to do something bad so I'm already feeling bad about it. I don't know,

I set off as I think most of us do to fix what was wrong with. Don't like feeling that way. I don't like the way that things look and the world feels. I want to change. This

attempts at changing thing involved me going out for a lot of different activities. I went out for sports. I was in football and basketball and track and wrestling. I went out for band. I went out for a theater

and nothing seemed to fit. Nothing seemed to work, nothing ever made me feel like this is it, this is what I've been missing. It made maybe for a little while, but I would always become restless and discontented with things very quickly and move on.

And so that's kind of how I grew up. I don't want to paint you a childhood that was totally horrible or anything. It just seemed like overall things kept getting worse. Whatever this blackness was inside of me was continuing to grow and continuing to need a solution that I couldn't seem to find. I didn't grow up in an alcoholic home. I grew up in kind of a pathetic home from a drinking perspective. My dad, I've never saw him drink. He drank once when I don't know if I was even born, but he was in Vietnam and he blacked out. And he woke up the next morning and he was scared

that he blacked out and that he lost control. And so he swore off alcohol and has never drank again. That all about you got a quitter. You know, you got to stick it out. And my mom would have one glass of wine on Christmas Eve and she wouldn't finish that. When I became of age, I would finish it. And when I say of age, I mean like 10. And,

and she gave that up my first stint through treatment. So I didn't have any examples. I didn't grow up even thinking about drinking. In fact, had you asked me back then, I would have said, no, I'm not going to drink. I want to be a good kid. You know, I want to do something with my life and I want to be a good person. And I'm going to join clubs that that promote not drinking. And

but anyway, so I had no, no example, if you will, of drinking. But when I was 15, I was introduced to alcohol for the first time

and what happened was we'd gone out. I used to say that we had gone out and we stole some alcohol. I call that now kind of podium fluff because I don't know that was really we stole it. I mean technically yes, but what it was was I went to my grandmothers house who kept a bunch of out. They had some old bar downstairs stocked with all these old bottles. And I just said, hey grandma, I'm just running down to grab something, don't worry about me. So I guess if that's your constitute stealing, but it wasn't as cool as I made it. Like we'd done a heist with ski masks or anything.

I ran down, grabbed a bottle of Canadian Windsor and

had an opportunity to drink alcohol. And alcohol is not my problem. Alcohol is my solution. Because every emotion, every situation that I've explained to you, alcohol has the ability to fix and change it for me. It is a magic elixir to me. It literally unshackles me and it allows me to get into the game of life like I have never been able to get. I can do things I cannot do sober. My thinking clears up when I'm drinking. It gets crystal razor sharp

and I can see things and I know things and I'm going to share them with you. And I can't wait because your life is going to be enriched too. It's a beautiful thing happening here. That first night, my first drinking experience, I drank way too much, way too fast. Passed out for most of it, blacked out for most of it. But I had the night relayed to me in chunks, bits and pieces, and I'd done things. I'd pick fights with people, I'd ask girls out. I'd started crying at one point. You know, I just apparently lived the gamut of life and gotten out

there. And I remember on Monday, people I didn't even know knew me were coming up to me and tell me what a Wildman I had been and telling me how crazy I had been. And it felt good. It felt like I belonged. Second time I went out and drank I took it a little slower and I found the effect that alcohol has on a person like me.

For years have struggled to try and find a better way to say this but I really can't. So I'm just going to stick with what I know works because this is my experience and this is my story. When I would go out. You have to remember how uncomfortable I am in my own skin sober.

And so I would by my nature, I would just stay at home. By this time, I, you know, I'm 1617 years old. The world had become so painful, I didn't even want to go out anymore. It's tough to be in this world when a can just devastate you ever said hello to somebody and they didn't say hello back happily enough, you know, like, hey, how you doing? Oh, hey, Jeff, how are you? You know, that kind of stuff just kills me. And I don't want to be that guy and I don't want to put myself in that kind of a position. So it would be easier for me just to stay home. But some friends of mine drug

out to some party and and I remember sitting there and I'm thinking to myself, why am I here? You know, I don't know why I'm here. I mean, just nobody likes me here. I know that and I'm an idiot. I just know that I'm the only guy here in a long sleeve shirt and it's the middle of July. What the hell is the matter with me? Why would I do that? And then some guy would walk in and I was always jealous and envious of guys because they had this camaraderie and bond that I could never seem to have. And obviously the cool high fives and cool nicknames for each other and stuff.

And that guy would come in and I would think that guy is going to want to fight me. I just know it. I'm going to mouth off or do something stupid. And then she would come into the room. She, I've had a she in my life since I was five years old. And she is the girl that I am pursuing. And if I could just get her, everything would be different. Everything would be different. I know this to the core of my soul if I could just get her. Now when I say I am pursuing her, I in no way mean I'm taking any action whatsoever.

What? I'm staring at her a lot

and if she by chance looks my way, I quickly turn away. So

dating is not a big part of my story.

And then I start drinking and somewhere along the lines a magical transformation takes place. And the first thing that seems to happen is I stand up a little straighter and I'm looking at the same room with the same people and the same things going on, but it all looks different to me. First thing I'm thinking to myself is I am so glad I came here. I am making this party. You know, I'd be dead without me. I go up to this guy that had intimidated me an hour before

and I now I'm no longer, I'm not full of fear. I'm not inadequate, I'm not anything. I let him know that if he is looking for trouble, look no further than right here, baby. And I look in the mirror and I'm like, yeah, I'm wearing a long sleeve shirt. That's kind of silly of me. Won't be needing that and rip that off Hulk Hogan style and wouldn't do that now I'll tell you. And I go up to her and I let her know that we are destined to be together. And she didn't seem to reciprocate my feelings. So

I'm not in the least bit embarrassed or hurt by that. I lock her into the bathroom till the poor woman can come to her senses, you know, And

that's how it is for me now I, I seem to, when I start drinking, lose the ability of control. And what that means is that when an alcohol goes into my system, a drink starts taking a drink and I just take off. And I didn't really ever have that much ambition to stop. But I do know that I seem to overshoot the mark a lot when I go out drinking. I just want to get there.

I just want to get comfortable and feel OK. And yet I was always getting so drunk. And the problem with that is if you drink like that long enough, you're going to start to develop consequences. And eventually, if you develop enough consequences, the faithful day will come where you make the firm declaration that you're not going to drink again. And that's where I discovered the second part of my illness, which is a mental obsession of the mind to drink alcohol. When I was new in Alcoholics Anonymous, my sponsor was taking me through the doctor's opinion. I remember saying, yeah, that doesn't apply to me. I didn't have a mental obsession of the

they didn't sit around shaking needing to drink all the time. Explained to me that's not what they mean. I have a mind that will block out all ideas to the contrary as to why I should not take that first drink for the insane idea that it will be different. This and you can fill in the blank on what that insane idea is. And I had a lot of them.

I was one of these people that I thought the more people I told I was quit drinking, the better my odds were. And that doesn't work. But it does make you look like a Jackass later on when you start drinking.

But I was always telling everybody, don't be offering me alcohol. I'm done. And one time we were on a road trip and I don't know, we were like 6 miles out of town. I grabbed a beer. And my buddy who's trying to be helpful, he's like, well, I thought you quit drinking

so well, I did when I'm in town. But Rd. trips are a whole different thing, you know? And that made perfect sense. Made sense to him, too. It only I remember. Oh, yeah, you're right, Jeff.

It only has to make sense long enough to get that first drink into my mouth. When that happens, a reaction takes place that seems to crave more. I end up drunk and I wake up the next day remorseful with a firm resolution not to let that happen again. And I was caught on that cycle and I could not get off. I fell prey to the fallacy that if I change my environment, everything will be different. I went off to college. I was convinced, you know, it is my problem. You know, I've got this reputation I have to maintain. I got these bad seeded friends that are bringing me down.

I'm going to college and it's all going to change. I'm going to finally buckle down. I'm going to apply myself for the first time in my life. It's going to be beautiful and I can't wait.

I'm going to just be married to the library. That's what I'm going to be a because see, back in 1989, people that spent a lot of time in the library and studied and worked hard, I called them, I don't call them nerds today. I call them boss and Sir and things like that. But boy, I was cool in 1989. Hey boss, remember how cool I used to be?

Anyway, I got down there and

I totally blew off them. My whole freshman year was just a joke, and I mean literally, I think I completed 4 credits in the old withdrawal was my best friend. And so I got down for my second year. Now it's all different, it's all going to be better. And I remember I'd made the most sincere pledge that I personally believe I'd ever made, that I was going to quit drinking. And God I believed it. It was first week of school. I was sitting at my desk and some friends of mine came by, peer pressured me into drinking.

You tell me if you could withstand peer pressure like this. They came by and said hey Jeff, we're going drinking, you want to go wait for me? And off I went.

Our book says we don't have an effective mental defense against the first drink. I don't even have a mental hesitation. I just go. And I went off. Nothing new. Got way drunker than I planned to. Everything was the same old, same old. She walked into the room again and I remember I went. I just was feeling so good. I thought, you know, I'm going in

and I went over to her and I just started telling her about destiny and the fact that, you know, we were destined to be together and blah, blah, blah. And

we're telling her, I remember telling her, I'm like, you know, I've been following you around and I,

oh, they call that stocking. I, I call it love. And

and then I had this thought pop into my head that life's too short. And as I've said, you can bet your butt that when an alcoholic has the phrase lifes too short go through their head, a big life changing decision is about to take place. And I decided I didn't even want to ask this girl out. I'm just going to propose, you know? And so I asked her to marry me. And then I remember telling her, no, no, don't answer yet,

I want you to know who I am and I'm not a weirdo. And so I started telling her my story. The long unedited version. And

I'm going on and on about how I think about suicide all the time, but I'm not going to. I won't do it now

and I don't know. You know, what's not to love there?

Anyway, she let me Babble on for a while. And finally she looks up at me and she says, you know, look, you scare me and I want you to leave. And I was just devastated by that. And I decided in kind of a grandiose theatrical fashion that I would leave. And I remember telling, you want me to leave? Fine, I'm going home to kill myself.

And I think somehow I'm making a point there, although I've yet to discover what the point is I'm making. And so I, I told her I was going home to kill myself, went home, grabbed a bottle of sleeping pills, took a handful and was in a strange, sadistic way, kind of proud of myself. I just made this big scene and told everyone I was going to kill myself. And by God, I've actually done it. So at least I'm going out doing what I said I was going to do. That counts for something. A friend of mine showed up my, you know, told him what I'd done. And he's like, God, we got to get you to a hospital because

to talk to a priest or your soul can't be admitted to heaven.

I was so drunk. That made sense. I'm like,

I'll drive and I

so I, I drove myself to the hospital and got there nurse came down. I handed her the bottle. She took it. She started laughing. And I know, I remember thinking, I know I'm drunk, I know that I'm really drunk, but laughing seems a little unprofessional to me. And she held up the bottle. She said, well, Jeff, what you took were vitamin C tablets and

and they didn't dawn on me that yet that I wasn't going to die.

And she said, well, now by state law, we have to keep you here. And I said, I'll go peacefully, but I want my own room. And she said, oh, you'll get your own room all right. And boy, did I. It was a beautiful room with padded walls and curtains on the Velcro and a bed that was bolted down and eye slits in the door. And I was in the psych ward, kind of a weaning way to end up in the psych ward, if you think, think about it,

you know, what are you here for? Well, my dog was telling me to kill the mailman.

I took too many vitamin C. And

anyway, I,

I am,

I'm going to share this. Should I share the other suicide attempt? No. Well, they say yes. Will, I got to thank Will. By the way, Will and I are on the end of an 800 mile track. We were down in Iowa last night at a convention and we've had a great time. We've got a chance to talk, by the way, in Iowa. I want to tell you what they're doing down there. I don't know if this is violating the traditions or not, but I think it's cool. They had Bill Wilson read how it works.

They they flashed his image up here and they had a recording of Bill reading how it works. It's the craziest thing I've ever seen. I was just mesmerized by the whole thing. Anyway, I just want to share that with you.

Oh, suicide. I was always thinking about suicide. I'm not making light of alcoholic suicide attempts. By the way, I had a lady a couple weeks ago accused me of that. In no way I'm making light of my alcoholic suicide attempts. They were so ridiculous. But I got it into my head. I was thinking to myself, it's like, well, I want to die. I know that. And I started going through my head of all the different things that I could do. And I decided that obviously I can't overdose. I botched that. I can't cut my wrist because I can't stand the sight of blood. I don't want to hang myself because I understand that, you know, you lose control of your bodily functions. And

I don't want that to be the last image of me. I want people to think highly of me when I'm dead. And I'd read that freezing to death was a beautiful way to die. It's painless, and angels come and just take you away. And I thought, that's for me. So one night, drunk on a bitterly cold night, I went back to my dorm room, was like 20 below. And I opened the window and shut the heat off in my room. And then I I sat down in my chair and I thought, OK,

And after a little while, I'm like, it's getting cold.

They didn't mention that in the book.

So I

I turned the heat up just to take the edge off a little

easy. Still, I was kind of cold. I'm like, well, boy, my bank, he looks nice. So I think I'm going to go curl up in that. And what will happen is this room will slowly get colder and colder. I'll be asleep and I'll be dead by morning. And

yeah, that didn't happen. I I woke up, my room was freezy and I can tell you that. And I had a terrible cold, could have used some vitamin C. But

anyway, but the bottom line for me is that, and I say these things in all earnestness, I mean, they're, they're, they're humorous now, but they weren't humorous then. I mean, I genuinely didn't know any other way to cope with life other than to try and check out. And what happened for me was I'd been introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous. I'd gone to a meeting and I was convinced

I don't need this kind of help if I want to quit drinking. I just got to put my mind to it and I'll be fine. And for the next two years I struggled with my own willpower to try and quit drinking and never could. My last drunk on a Thursday night, I managed to go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was very proud of myself, I really was, because it was a hard thing for me to do. A lot of times I would drive by with the intent of going and then something just wouldn't let me stop the car and I'd take off again. And then of course, I'd wait till eight one and think, well, the meeting started. I can't go now. And

anyway, but I'd gone to a meeting. I was very proud of myself. And I came home that night and my roommates was a Thursday night. They weren't doing anything special. They had some friends over and I panicked. I panicked like I've never panicked before. And I remember thinking I can't function in life without alcohol. I can't talk to these girls.

I can't talk to these guys. I have to have it. My friends weren't even looking to party that night. And I started pushing the idea. Let's go drinking, let's get some alcohol. Let's go drinking. Let's no, no, Jeff, let's just hang on. Let's just be cool tonight. No, no, I'll buy. And I was absolutely stripped away of any of remaining ideas as to who I was. I saw myself for exactly what I was, and I was a person who was completely dependent upon alcohol to function. And I got drunk that night. I got drunk Friday and I got drunk Saturday. And I woke up somewhere I drunk into the night on Sunday morning and I woke up on that

day, which was March 15th of 1992, with this terrible sense of dread that if I ever drink again, I'm going to never experienced anything like it. And it scared me to like any good alcoholic man, when I am faced with that kind of fear, I do what we and I called my mom because in the end of the day, I am a mama's

called her. She was very calm and collected, which was unlike her because I didn't I didn't sugarcoat it. I said, mom, I think I'm going to die if I ever drink again. I think I'm going to die. And it scares me because I don't know if I can't not drink. She got me some help. She got me into treatment. Treatment got me back into Alcoholics Anonymous. By this time, I was 21 and convinced I was the youngest person in the history of the world to sober up. And I started going to meetings. Now, let me tell you what I did not do in the early days. I did not have a Home group. I did not have a commitment,

a Home group. I did not have any regularity to my meeting attendance. I wet, I went when I felt like it was given the philosophy that you can take what you want and leave the rest. And I invoked that liberally because, but the problem is, is if I knew what I needed, if I knew what I needed, then the chances are I would have already done what I needed to do to get better. I didn't have a sponsor. I didn't have any kind of an unemotional point of view in my life, and I certainly had no relationship whatsoever

with anything resembling a higher power. Nothing. I attended meetings, I took up space. I judged people, I was negative, I was cynical, and I was on the fast track right back out the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm a guy. As I said at the beginning,

alcoholism or I've been convinced that alcoholism is not my problem. And even in

it seemed to me that that was not my problem.

At six months sober of not drinking, I was convinced more than ever that alcohol is now I am not drinking now I am six months sober and I left my house with the idea of killing myself once again. That's always an option on the table for me drinking or trying a one last time. And by the grace of God, I ended up at Alcoholics Anonymous one last time and a lady gave me some advice that saved my life. And she said that I needed to find a Home group and get involved in it and I needed to get a sponsor and I needed to quit worrying about not drinking the rest of my life and just

not drinking for today.

Luckily for me, I went and said, I'm like, OK, I'm going to get a sponsor. And I went and I asked somebody and they said and asked another guy and he said God was bringing me to the person I needed to be with. He brought me to a guy who I would have never asked to be my sponsor and I certainly would have never listened to him. He brought me to this guy who was all fired up on Alcoholics Anonymous bad. And I found out later that that he had just moved to Minot and his sponsor had said, I want you to find some new people, preferably sick ones, and start working.

And I qualified big time. And so his eyes lit up and I sat down with him that night and I made a deal with the devil. He said to me that I'm going to ask you to do some things and I'm going to ask you to participate in your recovery. And if you think you can handle that, then yeah, I'd be happy to sponsor you. And I had nowhere else to go. Ultimately, for me, I tend to make the right decision when I have no other decisions to make because if a bad one's in the mix, that tends to be the way I lean. But I didn't have any other decisions to make. I didn't have anywhere else to go. And, and I, I told him that

yeah, I will, I will try it your way. First thing he said, we're going to meet once a week. And of that, once on that meeting time, I got 15 minutes to whine about whatever it was I wanted to go on about. And believe me, I used all 15 of that. And then the last 45 were going to be spent going through the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous because apparently someone had hidden the instructions on how to work our steps in there. Who knew that? He said that I had to get involved in his Home group and that I had get a job in it or commitment, as he called it. And I remember he would make me go early, our meeting

at 8:00, and he would have me there at 6:30. This is ungodly early. Now, I don't know how your mind works, but if you go early, you get to leave early, right? Yeah. Let me tell you that wasn't flying with him at was staying late. So he's got me involved in this meeting. He's got me on cleanup committee. I'm cleaning up messes I didn't even make. I found out drunks are very inconsiderate of the cleanup guy. Let me tell you,

and I'm going to Alcoholics Anonymous now and I'm meeting him. And I would meet him. We'd sit down and have a cup of coffee and he'd say, well, tell me about your week.

Boy, will I ever. I got on the bus and people were looking at me funny and I walked into class and two girls were laughing and I know they were laughing at me. And, and he'd let me go on and on for a little while and he'd say, OK, well, let's, you know, read the book. And so slowly but surely we started, or I started to incorporate some, some basic principles of recovery and I started to learn a little bit about the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. And he took me through those things. And all along the way, it seemed to me he was kind of

tricking me into taking actions that I wouldn't have taken had he told me up front. I remember one night he said, we're going to go speak at the hospital on Saturday. You want to go? I'm like, yeah, I suppose he's like, well, pick you up at 5:30. You know, the meeting's at 8. That's really early. But I suppose we're going to stand there like idiots and greet for 2 1/2 hours. So. OK. And so we've got. I'd get in the car

and we'd start driving out of town and I'd be like, aren't we speaking at the hospital? He's like, yeah, we are, but it's in Bismarck, 100 miles away, and off we go. And, you know, I had nowhere to go. I was trapped in the back middle hump, I might add. And

I've made the observation, I don't know if it's true everywhere, but anytime you find a sponsor that's sponsoring 3 or more people, inevitably someone will grasp onto the role of what I like to call the good one. The good sponsee is sincere about recovery. They're giving it their and you know, they're just doing the deal. And people like me who are cynical and judgmental and more preoccupied with being cool, can't stand people like that.

And Chris was the good one of the bunch. And Chris whips out, as Bill sees it now it's a Saturday night. We're going to the state hot or the, I don't know where we're going, some hospital in Bismarck. And he says, hey, I got a great idea. Let's play this game I made-up. I'll read, as Bill sees it, a passage, and then we'll guess what it's from. Is it from the big book, the Grapevine, the 12 and 12, a letter? It'll be great. And my sponsor is just lapping this up, right? God, Chris, that's a beautiful idea.

And I am in the back thinking to myself, no, no, no, no, no. I am not spending a Saturday night in the back of this car in the middle on the hump playing. What the hell? Did Bill write this in game? No,

it's not going to happen.

Of course, my other option was they could pull over and let me out on the side of the road. And so the nice thing about Alcoholics Anonymous is that it doesn't care what I think. It cares what I do. And I was in the car and I was taking the right action and I was around the right people. And so despite myself, truly despite myself, I started to get better. When I became a year sober, my sponsor started pushing me. By this time he had really hammered into me this concept of

selfishness and self centeredness being the rid of my problem. And he'd really employed in me this ethic of I need to be working with others. And I remember saying there's no way I can't work with others because I will screw them up more than they are already screwed up. Trust me, I don't have anything to offer, nothing. I don't know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not going to be able to answer any questions. Half the time I don't even have the right motive on top of my mind. I mean, trust me, I would be doing newcomers a better service to stay away from them.

This was the mentality I had. And I remember him explaining to me, you know, you don't have to have anything to give other than this. You're going to spend two things in your life. You're going to spend money and you're going to spend time, and money will always be replaceable. So if you are willing just to give of your time, you are now doing exactly what you were supposed to be in Alcoholics Anonymous. That is it. In whatever manner that I could. Sometimes it was giving a ride, sometimes it was shaking somebody's hand. Sometimes it was asking a few simple questions and feigning interest in someone else's

life. That is how my whole career of working with others started. Was just trying to give of my time a little bit. Answer your phone regardless of how inconvenient it is or the fact that you're taking an I'll deserved nap, you know, things like that. And I slowly but surely kind of, you know, caught on to that and started doing that. And so I didn't learn everything I needed to learn in that first year. I didn't learn everything I needed to learn about the 12 steps. I didn't learn everything I needed to learn about God or the traditions or the concepts, but I learned enough

sober. I learned enough to try and practice these principles in all of my affairs, and I learned enough to keep learning, if that makes sense. When I got to be two years sober, I was starting to get a little better. I met another her and her and I got hired at the same company on the same. That's a sign.

I went home and I told my sponsor. I said I've met the one. And he said, well, Jeff, you know, it's not a good idea to to date people you work with. And I said no problem, went down and quit my job. And

you got to be specific.

And we started this

horrendous relationship. We tell you about Heidi and I, I didn't even realize this till I heard her talk last spring. I'm like, oh, that's true. We've been dating for three months and we started going to marriage counseling. We weren't even engaged yet. And but we decided we were fighting so much that our relationship had become so sick in three months that we had to start going to marriage counseling. How many couples at three months are going to do that? You know, most normal, logical thinking people would be like, well, this clearly isn't working out. Good luck with everything. But no, not

and Heidi, we're going to stick it out. And so we're going to marriage counseling, trying to learn how to get somebody identifying. All right, it'll be OK. It's got a happy ending, so,