The Northern Plains Group in Fargo, ND

My name is Bob Darrell and I am alcoholic.

I don't know if I would get used to that

because of God's grace. Good sponsorship. The 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, committed and dedicated Home group

and bushels and newcomers. I've been sober, free from alcohol and all mind and emotion altering substances since Halloween 1978.

And as we get into my story a little bit, you'll realize that

how much of our,

how grateful I am to Alcoholics Anonymous for doing, allowing me to have a life that was almost over when I got here.

I, I want to welcome the new people. I'm real glad you're here. I, I'm, I, I believe that sometimes,

without us knowing it, we're brought together by divine appointment.

I think sometimes

I would go to meetings in my new early days and people would be there and say things that I absolutely just

needed to hear at that exact moment.

And I'm only here for two people. I'm here for the person who

for some reason you can't understand, you keep relapsing and,

and you just can't seem to connect with what the other people here have connected with. And you, you get 10 months and you go out and you get 6 months and you go out and I'm here for you because you are me. I did that for 7 1/2 years. And the other person I'm here for is the person that's leaving Alcoholics Anonymous after being here a while. And you don't even know you're leaving.

And, you know, you're leaving because you're you're starting to notice what's wrong with a lot of the people here.

And I think we leave Alcoholics Anonymous one judgment at a time

is the ego gets back in place and I'm here for you and I'm here to talk to you because you are me. Also, I tell you, I've been so close to the edge of Alcoholics Anonymous on through as a result of my own ego on several occasions. I'm very, very blessed to still be here and to have survived my own self centeredness in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. That part of me that really doesn't want me here wants me out there alone so it can have its way with me. And it's not good.

Hi, I want to thank the 10 minute speakers.

Thank you Karen. There was a great talk and Dan, Dan was a good I you know, usually people don't want to commit suicide until they know me at least a week. I mean, you know, I mean, you know, I,

But thank you for your talk.

I, I don't, I don't know why I'm an alcoholic, really. I I didn't come. My parents weren't alcoholic.

Some people's parents are. I was deluded into thinking at one time that you had to have alcoholic parents to be alcoholic, but that wouldn't wasn't my case.

I came from a family where I was loved.

I never was mistreated. I my parents, I always knew they were on my side. I always knew that they they cared about me immensely,

but I I was so introspective and in wrapped up inside myself and internally focused as a kid that I couldn't really feel the love. I knew it was their intellectually my sister who doesn't have this malady of the spirit, this self inclination to over self involvement that I've always had felt the love. She was present for it,

but I wasn't present for it. I was in the house,

but you know, Alcoholics of my type, we have this, this self, it's absorbed mentality. And so I don't really connect out here too much because the truth is I ain't out here too much. I'm up here,

right? Because of that, I, I missed a lot of the great stuff in my childhood. It was there. I didn't know I had a malady of the spirit called alcoholism. I didn't know I had any of that until I took my first drink. And when I took my first drink

that was off and running, I, I tell you, it made me feel so good that the way I would be without it on the natch from that moment on would never ever really be enough for me again.

And I got locked into the juice and the magic of drinking. And it was fantastic. For a guy who lives in his head and doesn't fit very well and is lonely and Moody and depressed and full of anxiety, to have seven or eight or 10 or 15 drinks and be able to come out and play and talk to people and dance and be funny. When you're not funny, you're never funny. Even try to be funny and it's an awkwardness. Anything. I'm never going to do that again because it doesn't work very well.

And drunk. I'm funny. I mean, I cracked me up. I'm really funny drunk

and I, I remember sometimes I, it make me bright. I sometimes I remember sitting with guys drinking all night long, just cracking the secrets of the universe. I'd be brilliant. I'd say things that just blow my mind. I mean just.

And then I'd sober up and I'd be back to being me again.

And I never ever liked that much, really. I always liked myself better like that,

but I have a disease that's a progressive illness. And over the years, my ability to obtain that effect, it seemed to get more elusive and, and I was chasing it more and drinking more and throwing more drugs in the mix, trying to jumpstart the party and get back to the good old days. And, and it's harder and harder to get that good feeling back, to get that electric feeling of community where you're a part of a bunch of people and you come out and play. And,

and I entered into a,

a stage of alcoholism that's very bleak. And it's what it talks about in a vision for you. And it says in there that we, it says for many years, and this was my story, I, I really couldn't imagine life without alcohol. So I would, I would end up in Alcoholics Anonymous through some treatment center and I would, you know, work better, feel better, having a better time. But the real truth was I can't. It feels like I'm doing time.

I can't imagine life without something because I'm a bump on the log sober. I ain't too good for nothing really. I don't fit very good. I don't have any fun sober. I'm half assed depressed all the time. I'm lonely, Oh my God, I just so lonely sometimes sober. And I'm not happy about my sobriety. And the book says if you're like that, you will presently try the old game again. And I did

and I did. And I did

and I did because I couldn't imagine life without alcohol.

And then something started to happen to me and it was awful. And it says it's exactly what it talks about in a vision for you. It says that we'll they'll come a time where we won't be able to imagine life either with alcohol or without it. That it's now with it is becoming really bad. And I'm leeched all the fun out of it and I can't jump start the party and get back to the good old days. And yet I can't stop because abstinence feels like I'm doing time

and that is a trap that I cannot spring.

And it says when you get to that place, you'll be at the jumping off place and you'll wish for the end. It says when you're at this jumping off place, which I think is the real entrance to Alcoholics Anonymous, I don't think it's that door back there or that door over there. I think for guys like me, it's the place it talks about there where I I've used up all the party and I'm stuck. And it says when you get to that place, you'll wish for the end.

And on my last drunk, I'd never read that part of the book,

but on my last drunk, I tried to take my own life and I tried to take my own life because I felt stuck. And I'm not a suicide guy. I, I, I'm a homicide guy, really. I'd rather kill you, you know what I'm saying? And I matter of fact, I used to make fun of people to talk about suicide. You know what a bunch of wimps, you know,

But you can put you back me into a corner where I'm starting to, I get it that the party's over and no matter what I drink, it's not funny anymore. Now I drink and I feel sorry for myself. I drink and I go on crying Jags. I drink and I don't even bathe anymore. What happened to the days when I get all fancied up and Cologne and stuff before I'd go out to party so I could go try to pick, meet her at the bar. You know, she's always there. Try to meet her at the bar.

Those days are over. Because I ain't meeting her. Because I don't care no more. Because now when I drink I feel sorry for myself and I'm not the guy that's at the party or the bar that's laughing and talking to people and having fun. No more. I can't. I don't know why I'm not that guy anymore. Because I used to be, and I remember moments of sitting in bars and eventually just

drinking by myself because I couldn't stand being around you anymore. Because when I was around you and I would see you laughing and carrying on and having a good time, he'd just break my heart. Because I could remember when I was all about that

and I ain't that about that no more. So I preferred the at the very end, I prefer drinking alone. And I just drank for oblivion. I just drank the blotted out. And what I'm trying to blot out is I'm trying to blot me out. All the every drink or drug I ever took was anti Bob medication really.

And I don't know what's going on. And, and through all of this, I'm going to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous.

True. I, I tell you something, this will sound a little weird, but this is very true. The worst years of my life were after I went to my first a, a meeting and the years I was in and out, It was the horrible, horrible years of my life. I mean, by the time I got to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, the progressiveness of this fatal disease was starting to get bad. But I hadn't. And I would have told you, oh, I can't get any worse than this. Well, I hadn't seen nothing yet.

And with this disease, I mean, it's unbelievable. It gets so bad. You think to yourself, oh, man, it can't get any worse. And you know what happens? It gets worse. It gets so bad that a guy like me stand on a bridge trying to take his own life in 1978 because I don't know what's. I can't live like this anymore. I can't. I understand the truth. I understand something has happened to me and I can't get the effects from getting high that I used to anymore

and that is a horrible proposition and I hate that because I have sold

my life and everything of value and every loved one and and every bit of self respect I have in order to chase that. And after there's nothing left of me, I can't even get that no more either.

And and at the same time, I can't imagine life without alcohol either because it feels like I'm doing time and I get sober and I'm depressed and I get a mind that just won't leave me alone, that just spins on me. And it just, it won't let up on me. And it, it doesn't help in a, a matter of fact, I go to a, a meetings and I sometimes it's worse because I sit there and I just sit in meetings and just you start thinking about what they're thinking about you,

you know, and I start imagining what you're thinking about me. And it just drives me crazy. And every time somebody looks my way, it's,

you know, I try to look cool on the outside, but inside me, I'm spinning, man. What's he looking at me for?

Yeah, So I drink.

I drank and I blotted out the best I can

in the years I was in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous. I want you to objectively, I want you to know that in the beginning couple years, when I was 20 years old, when I first started coming here, I really didn't want what you had. Really. Because I was still under an illusion that I can jump start the party and I'm going to turn it around. It's going to be good. I can control and enjoy this thing like I did one time.

But there came a time when it started getting really bad and I was losing everything. And I, I ended up a homeless guy and, and I jacked my life off and I'd burn it to the ground. And I don't know what's wrong with me and it's not good. And now I started coming to a A because I got to turn this around and I really wanted something different. But if you've ever sat in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous with untreated alcoholism, with this

judgment factory mind that I got, man, it's hard to connect with anything here because I don't, I don't like people. And the problem with a a, there's a lot of people in a A and that's a that's really not good for me. And I don't like people

and people threaten me now. I don't know they threatened me, but they do. And because they threatened me, I just my defense mechanisms to pick them apart, to judge them, to make fun of him in my head.

And I never connect with nothing. And I look at you and I observe you. And what becomes very apparent to me is that the people in Alcoholics Anonymous have a tremendous drinking problem. I can hear your stories. I mean, I heard awful, tremendous things that people did when drinking,

but I have visual and audio evidence that when you stop drinking, you really come. You become very happy.

You're really very OK when you quit drinking. I can see it. I mean, you got better. You're having more fun sober, some of you, than I have when my good days of drinking.

You have relationships that are beyond anything I've ever had.

You're holding jobs. I can't hold a job. I usually get to the first payday. And that's, I mean, you can't give me a guy like me a paycheck and two days off. I mean, you can expect me to come back Monday. I mean, you know, I mean really,

you guys, some of you guys have had job, the same job for years, get wives and kids and you're buying houses and I can't even consistently pay rent for three months in a row. I mean, jeez, I sleep on guys couches if I'm luckier, if I'm not in some halfway house.

So I came to a conclusion that seemed so obvious to me that you were nice people. You really were. You always were very nice to me,

but I knew that whatever is wrong with me is not the same thing that's wrong with you. And I had, I had evidence because I could look at the way you were when you quit drinking. And I knew painfully how I was when I quit drinking. And there was no match here at all.

So I gave up on Alcoholics Anonymous and I just, I went to psychiatrists and I tried medications and I even went to church. I've been, I've been sprinkled and dunked and chanted over and, and I've repaired my inner child. I've primal screamed. I've, I've rationally emoted. I've, oh man, I've done it all. I've everything from Ram Dass to Rum Dum and

and the end result was a hopelessness

that I am the boy. I'll tell you, I find myself so consistently in this book. There's a part in there where it talks to about we get to a place, place where there's just nothing left

where you've tried everything. You've, I mean, I've tried everything. I've thrown everything at this deal. Just not trying to even be great. Just trying to get comfortable. I want to either be comfortable drinking like I used to be or I want to be comfortable sober like other people seem to be. And I can't be either one of those really.

And so I go into a cycle. I go these cycles of spree and remorse and I get drunk until I I so sick I can't drink anymore. I run out of money or I get arrested and then I'm forced into abstinence. And I, I know that this is what I should be doing. And I hang out and do that and tough it out day in and day out and week in and week out and month in and month out till I just can't, I just can't do that anymore. And then I drink again. Or, or maybe I don't. Maybe I, I know sometimes I knew I can't drink. So I I'll do something else. I'll,

I'll smoke something or I'll, I'll take some Nyquil, a couple bottles of Nyquil. I don't have a cold, but I can feel one coming, you know, just but I got to, I got to take some. It's all medicine for the disease of alcoholism, because I can't stand

me the way I am on the nach anymore.

And what I've often I got sober and I'd often think what happened to me. Chuck Chamberlain used to talk about surrender, and I understood when after I'd been sober a little while that I had been surrendered by the bottle. But what was it? What happened? What was different on my last drunk than all the other drunks? I mean, it wasn't, I tell you, it wasn't my worst one. I've had some that were

nightmares. I came out, I've come off some that were just, I mean like a bad, bad, horrific nightmare.

My last one was not the worst, but it was the one that put me over the top.

And I, I was early in sobriety and

a guy, people in a, a gave me everything. When you're a homeless guy off the streets. I mean, you know, they gave me clothes to where they bought me cigarettes. They gave me one guy gave me a bunch of books to read. And I'm reading this book one day and it's not a recovery book. It's just a novel. But I saw something in that book that blew my mind. And when I read this, I understood exactly what had happened to me. And maybe there's somebody in this room that the exact

same thing has happened to you.

And I'm reading in this book, and it's an account of these scientists are doing experiments on the human brain. And they discovered that in the human brain, there was this one part of the brain that allows you to experience the euphoria and the high from alcohol and drugs. And they had a long Latin name, but they kept referring to it as the pleasure center of the brain. And So what these these scientists did is they took these laboratory rats and they put these two tiny

wire filaments into the pleasure center, the rat's brain. And then they would pass a mild

undetectable electric charge through those wires just enough to stimulate that pleasure center. And what would happen is the rat would get loaded. And So what they do is they'd hook it up the juice to a petal in the rats cage and the rat would learn he could hit that pedal and get high. So the rat just lays on the damn pedal. I mean, you know, he does, he don't eat, he don't sleep, he don't drink water. I mean, he don't even have sex because he's really partying over here, you know? I mean, you know, he's hitting that pedal.

And he'll do that until he dies. And he usually he's die, he dies from dehydration.

Well, these scientists had watched that. And So what they started doing was, and that's not the hitting the pedal to die didn't really blow my mind. I just kind of got that. I mean, we all get that. I mean, there's some rats in this room today, I can tell.

But what really blew my mind is these scientists would watch these rats die. So they would wait until a rat was just about dead and they turned the juice off. Now the rat would go back and hit the pedal, only this time nothing would happen. And you hit it again and again and again and again, and nothing would happen. He'd finally, after many countless feudal vain attempts to recapture the party,

he'd realize that the party's over, and instead of being able to go back to just being a rat, the rat would curl up on a in a ball and lay on the floor of the cage to die.

Because without the juice, there was nothing to live for in 1978.

That's me. I'm that rat. I don't want to get sober. Really. I'm stuck here. I don't have anywhere else to go. If God would have come to me personally and said, Bob, I'll give you one wish, it would not have been sobriety,

would it would have been honestly, and this is the truth, I would have said, give me three years of partying like I was 18 years old. You can kill me at the end of three years, but give me those three years

instead. I got Alcoholics Anonymous and I got a sponsor and I,

I was, I was crazy because I came into Alcoholics Anonymous in a group that we was very, that nobody read this anymore. Everybody's trying to work the steps out of the 12 by 12. And so I did everything that they did. And my first couple years of sobriety, I did, I did the inventory, the 36 questions out of the 12 by 12. And I did another one with the life history and I went to a lot of meetings and the only reason I stayed physically sober my first almost five years of sobriety as I went to 12/15

things a week. I went on 12 step calls and panels. I was a GSR, a DCM. I did everything Alcoholics Anonymous asked me and I am free. I am doing it frantically in big doses. I'm doing AA like I drank and I'm trying to outrun my alcoholism because I ain't doing very well really. But if you stay active when it says in the big book that nothing will ensure immunity from intensive drinking like intensive work, like returning to drink drinking like intensive work with other Alcoholics, it

other activities fail. It saved my life. I wouldn't be here if it wouldn't have been for a lot of 12 step work that where I'd get these little islands of being relieved of this self obsession and this locked in my head just dying.

Because sometimes with a guy that's brand new, I'd, I'd be so into him for a little while in his pain that I wouldn't, I'd be off of me

and I get those little islands of relief. But nothing had really changed within my spirit really.

And I got a sponsor and I was a high maintenance. Oh God, I was a high maintenance sponsee when I was my first several years. I mean, I was a crisis. It seemed like every other day, you know, and, and I just, I, it feels it would start like a low hum in my head worrying about stuff. And I just build and build until I'd be on the phone just going crazy to my sponsor. You know, I'm going to, if I'm going to do 2 years in prison, they're going to find out where I am in Pennsylvania. And it's not good in the I'm going to lose this job

fit there. I don't know how to do this. They're looking at me funny. I don't think they like me. I got a brain tumor. I can feel it. I know I do, you know, and I nobody's going to ever love me. Everybody else is getting laid except me. This is really bad. I'm not having any fun on, you know, and he just, he just stopped me and he'd say, wait a minute,

is everything OK right this second? And I'd say, yeah, yeah, it is. But you know, by the end of the month,

not going to have my rent, he'd say, listen, is everything all right? Right this second.

Well, yeah, yeah. He says good, good. You know, when it's no, it's no longer OK. Right this second. You and I are going to have something to to work on here. But let's stop clearing up the refugee or future and let's stop trying to solve problems that haven't occurred yet. And what he's trying to do is bring me to the only place I'll ever find God. The place that talks about in chapter 5 where it says that there is one who has all power. That one is God. May you find him in a place that I never visited. Now

I'm up here, I'm worrying about tomorrow. I'm anguishing over yesterday. I'm never really present in my life really.

And I, I suffered from low level depressions in early sobriety. I, they told me to start doing some things that I, I, I didn't want to do. I didn't believe them. A guy said to me when I was new, he says you got to physically get down on your knees every morning and every night and ask whatever's running the universe for help and then thank that at night. And I don't want to, I said, I don't believe in God. We don't care if you believe in God, just do it,

I felt, I said. I finally went back to him after doing it one day. I was doing it in the halfway house and I was awkward because I got to go in the bathroom so nobody sees me and I lock the door and make sure the drapes and I take the throw rug and push it up against the crack under the door so nobody will look under there and see me. Pray you know,

and I just I felt like a hypocrite and I went to this guy. I said I don't want to do this. This is I feel I don't really believe in God. I feel like a hypocrite. He says you've been a hypocrite all your life. What the hell is the difference? He said you spent a whole life saying one thing and doing something else would just do this.

I just, I kept doing it. I kept doing it. And it was. And I remember going back to him and saying, you know, how come I got to get on my knees? There's people and hey, pray on the can, pray on the car on the way to work. How come I got to get on my knees? He says not everybody does, but people with egos like you do,

man. And I just got down on my knees and I realized I started to realize it took years and years for me to understand it. I wasn't down on my knees for God.

God don't care. I was down on my knees for me

because it was an ultimate demonstration of a humble position that I was trying with an ego like mine I'm trying to take,

and I needed to do that for me. I didn't need to do it for God,

and funny things started happening to me as a result of doing that and turning my life over to the people in AAI didn't get well. But I started to understand a couple things and I started to experience something that was It was like coincidences. In the middle of my bouts of depression and anxiety and loneliness and not fitting and just the untreated alcoholism that I suffered from,

I started to sense the presence of God in my life.

In the middle of that and how it started happening is, is, is that as a result of acting as if there was something in my life, some coincidences started happening to me and they were all in my favor. And I what I'm talking about is the, is the weird little things that would happen over and over. I'd be at home and depressed and the phone would ring. How did they know to call me just then?

Or I'd be, I'd go to some meeting and I'm frantic and I'm crazy and I don't know what's wrong and I'm about ready to quit my job.

And there'd be somebody in the meeting that I don't even know talking exactly about what how I'm feeling and what's happening. And I see through his experience that I, I don't need to quit my job. I need to go make amends to my boss. And that didn't happen to me once or twice. That happened to me over and over and over again and very slowly over the period of a couple years,

I started to really get a sense of the presence of something here working in my life.

There's a an old story I've heard. God, I heard it 25 years more longer ago about about in England. The streets of London were, were were lit by gas lamps and up and just until not too long ago, there was a guy who would go up and down the streets of London with a long pole to light the gas lamps who and the sun went down. He was called a lamplighter. And you could climb up to the top of the highest building in London and look out over.

No matter how hard you looked, you couldn't see where the lamplighter was,

but you could see where he'd been. I could sit in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous at 2 1/2 years sober, and I really I couldn't see where God was. I don't know where God was,

but I could see where he'd been

and even more clearly than seeing where he'd been in my life, I saw where he'd been in the lives of the guys that came in 3456 months behind me because I watched them. I went to the meetings in the detox. I saw them when they came in there. I saw how dead they were of spirit, how hopeless they were, how they burnt their life to the ground to the point where they're never going to see their kids again. They're never going to be OK. They're never going to get right with their parents. They're never going to get a life. They're never going to have any fun. They're just, they're just.

And then two years later I see him in the back of a meeting hall with two of their sponses and they're laughing and they're our CMT. Their third year birthday cake and their kids are there helping them get in a sharing their birthday with them.

And I could see the presence of God in their life pretty quick, quicker than I could see it in mine. It's hard to see God work in your life because he's, well, he's slow, but he's old. I mean, he can't help. I mean, you know,

I mean you really, when you try to watch the hand of God work in your life, it's like trying to stand in the front of the mirror and watch your hair grow. I mean, it's just,

it's very slow.

And I, I was 4 1/2 years sober when I finally,

as a result of about 5 gentlemen and Alcoholics Anonymous that really helped me, Charlie from Arkansas and Wesley Parish and Don Pritz who died last year,

Franklin Williams and a couple other guys. I started to understand and also trying to help guys I sponsor do stuff I hadn't done yet in the book. I started to understand how to do a fourth step out of the book and, and I went through and I did that and I'll tell you, I've never been the same since. And I had a lot of amends to make, you know, I mean a lot.

And I just started getting on the wagon and I just did it.

And I'll tell you one little quick

story and then I'll cut her. I'll cut her down. I think probably run out of time.

One of the things that I had that was very essential for me to connect with here is a principle. And the principle is that what I do here is more important than how I feel. And that is a hard proposition to buy for a self involved, self obsessed person that really cares nothing more than they. All they care about is their feelings, their security, their relationships, their finances, how I look, me, me, me.

That I could serve.

I don't have to serve that I can serve an ethic and a set of principles that is greater than myself. And maybe in serving that ethic and that set of actions and principles, maybe, maybe in a feeble way, maybe I'll even occasionally serve God.

And I got that

at a meeting one night when I was,

I went there in a deep, deep depression

And I, I went there for I didn't, I, I didn't know what else to do. I was scared and I was afraid this was a bad one. And I might drink again. I don't know if you've ever sat in a meeting with a depression, you're just so in your head. I can't hear nothing. It's like music in a doctor's office. And I haven't worked the steps yet. So I, I haven't cleared my spirit of I mean, I, I, what happens is I just get on me and I start smothering me. I get my emotions in my life on me, like that creature

alien that attaches itself to your face. And I'm, I'm in that meeting and I'm not doing very good and I can't hear anything. But there's a guy

in the back of the meeting who's coming off a drunk and he's really doing bad.

And somehow after the meeting, he, I was the last guy to leave along with the secretary. And the secretary couldn't help him. And he pushed me into taking this guy down to the hospital, the County Hospital, because he didn't have any other place to go because he had no money or insurance.

And I knew I was in for a long ride down there and I wasn't happy about it. And I was pissed at the fact that I had to go and I was going to be tired for work the next morning. But I went because I, I didn't know what else to do. And in the wee hours of the morning, sitting in that hospital waiting for this guy, after sitting there for hours waiting for him to get a bed and watching him fly apart, I started to listen to him tell me about himself.

And he told me about the his family and how he couldn't even drink away the shame and the guilt. No more of the things he did to them.

It was just overwhelming. And he just ate his lunch. And then he said to me about how he's been trying to find a way to commit suicide and he's such a coward he can't do it. And then he said something that really hooked me. He said to me, he says I don't know why you're wasting time with me. You see, I'm not like you. People in AAI always drink again and he's telling me about me

and somewhere in the wee hours of the morning I fell in love with him. I fell in love with him for no reason really. He couldn't

get me a better job. He couldn't do anything for me except that he suffered for alcohol from alcoholism, exactly like I suffered from it.

And I remember they checked him in and I'm driving home in the wee hours of the morning and I got tears running down my face because I don't think in my whole life I ever felt more complete, more right about myself, more connected and useful and just. Man, it was better than five shots of tequila and five shots of tequila worked.

And I realized that this is the vehicle by which God will relieve a guy like me of the bondage of self and that this really is my primary purpose and this is the good dope in a A and this is what I live for. And as a result of claiming that primary purpose, everything in my life makes sense. I Everything I've ever done wrong, sober, drunk,

everything is useful for the guy that comes in the door next week, but for some reason he's brought to me by divine appointment.

I can't help everybody, but I can help people that are sick like I'm sick and Alcoholics Anonymous. We have a wrench for every nut and I'm just glad to have the wrench I got. Thank you for my life.