The District 5, Area 74 Service Workshop in River Falls, WI

Hi everybody, My name is Helen. I'm an alcoholic.

I'll make this brief and try to not be teary eyed. I'm going to introduce the speaker this evening. I met him about 20, about 20-3 years ago. He he surprisingly enough, I was struggling with. I personally was struggling with. I had not drank for a long time hanging around a a people dating a guy in a A and and he sat me down and started reading me the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Let me let me go back to steps

because the first time I ever saw him, I didn't meet him. I was in a foster home and I was on the phone with my dad. I was still using at the time Pat was sober and he came to pick up my foster sister to take her to an A, a meeting. And I remember having a thought, I'm going to marry that man someday.

And so then let's go back to the a part. Then you read me the big book with with

no intentions except for to carry the message of Alcoholics Anonymous to me.

Long story short, we ended up getting married.

We celebrated 20 years of marriage last week.

Not that we haven't had our struggles, but but due to Alcoholics Anonymous and a God of our understanding, I believe we've been able to make it through all of these times. We've raised a he's an excellent father. We've raised two kids. We have an exchange student living with us and and because of Alcoholics Anonymous. Sincerely.

Still to this day, when he comes home from work, I get butterflies.

I'm madly in love with him.

And as I've introduced him before, the part that I'm more right here is I'm more madly in love with what he has to offer to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I've said many times, obviously I love him dearly and blah, blah, blah, that fruity stuff.

And it would be heartbreaking if we ever split up. But the hardest part to me would be that I would not be able to be maybe part of what he

gives to so many people and Alcoholics Anonymous. He's probably one of the top five most giving people when it comes to the men that he sponsors and what he does for Alcoholics Anonymous. He is a walking big book and and I admire that. So with that Pat.

Hi everyone my name is Pam recovered alcoholic.

I guess that's a good definition of trust letting your wife introduce you to me of Alcoholics Anonymous who okay I'm I'm a little not as nervous now OK first I want to I want to start out by thanking Adam for asking me to speak here tonight as always an honor as always a privilege to speak at the point of Alcoholics Anonymous. I introduced myself as a recovered alcoholic because the book say it's to me anyway, that

I have recovered from seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. And that is the primary purpose of the book of Alcoholic Anonymous. It's just how did we do that?

Yeah, I'm going to need more than one.

I'm a member of the Northside group of Alcoholics Anonymous where Steps in tradition meeting. We meet on Sunday night in Eau Claire, WI at 7:00. If you want to hear about the steps and traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous, please join us. It's a great meeting. We start at 7:00 PM. We end at 8:00 PM. If you're interested in going to a meeting and hearing about a person's day or problems, don't come to our meeting and just being honest with you. That's not what our meeting is about. Our meeting is about the steps and traditions. And, and that's all right, you know, because when I first came to Alcoholics Anonymous,

I didn't know that meetings were structured differently, that within the traditions, each group can do that. And if I don't like particular mean, that's OK. And I don't think there's a bad meaning of Alcoholics Anonymous. I just know for myself in my own recovery that I need to attend a certain type of meeting. And for me, it's a meeting that talks about steps. That's me.

Thanks, Dan. Appreciate that

Dan's one of my favorite people. I don't get to see him that often.

The book also tells me that I need to share in a general way

what it was like, what it was like, what happened, what it's like today.

And you know, I always struggle and I do this every time that I've been asked to speak at a meeting. Is, is how do you begin? How do you start with all that? Because it's a, it's, it's interesting and fascinating. And, and I remember one time I spoke at the Pacific group of Alcoholics Anonymous and they recorded it. And, and a little while later, I gave this tape to a friend of mine and, and she listened to the tape and she gave it back to me and she said,

man, it was like a roller coaster ride. And I was like, yeah, it was, you know, I mean, I lived through it all. It was a roller coaster ride

and what I'll share tonight is, is exactly that. And my best ability to be honest, I got to share this though that understand again, my interpretation of the book of Alcoholics Anonymous is my experience. And, and no right or wrong, it's just my experiences. So I and I, and I was thinking this right before I got up, I was looking at Mary Jo. I don't know all the times you've heard me speak and it's like, why are you still here?

Because it's like I was just at the Pacific Group too, not that long ago. But

that's always fun. If you ever get a chance to go to a Pacific group of Alcoholics Anonymous. And no, Clare, you need to go. If you need some energy, you need a, you need a plug, you need some enthusiasm. Please attend that meeting. It's a wonderful meeting for enthusiasm. So let's see, I, I grew up in alcoholic home. My mom's an alcoholic. I can remember a little as a little child that my relatives tell me. I can remember my aunt actually telling me distinctly that my mom was a practicing alcoholic.

And I can remember the thinking distinctly that I never thought she needed to practice. She seemed to do just fine.

What does that mean to me today?

It doesn't really mean a lot to me today. It's just my ethnic background is kind of how I consider it because for a long period of time I used to blame a lot of my problems and my parents and, and anybody else that kind of crossed my path. But I used to blame my parents for a lot of things and and today I understand that I'm the adult and I'm responsible for my own solutions

and so I don't do that anymore. I think my parents did the absolute best that they could do. The interesting part was this.

When I was about seven or eight years old, I went to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I remember that because there were like 12 things that they like read before the meeting and then there were like 12 things they read at the end of the meeting. I don't know what they were, you know, and I wasn't all interested in what they were saying, but I was had to be there, which is really interesting is like mid 1970s. First time I went to a meeting and again I was like 7 or 8 years old.

Interesting enough, that was about the same time I started drinking. I've heard in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous about people that,

you know, they waited until they were like in high school or they waited until they were starting college before they drank. And my immediate thought when I hear that is how in God's name did you last that long? How did you make it? I mean, as far back as my memory takes me, I was restless, irritable and discontent. I really was. And seven years old going into the fridge, grabbing 2 bottles of Lion Kugels and go out on Sandbox to play. That was a good afternoon for me. It was, it was fine, you know, I had no problems with it.

2 bottles will put me on my caboose. I mean, I'd be, you know, but I got what I was looking for, you know what I mean?

I was just, I just wanted that.

That's what I wanted. And I'll call provided that for me. All the chaos and all the insanity that was going on around me, it got me out of that for a period of time,

as you can imagine. Now, truthfully, I mean, this is how things went in my life. My mom would, would not drink for periods of time and then she'd drink again. And then she, you know, the beer would be gone. And then she'd find, she'd drink for a while and then she'd go back to Alcoholics Anonymous and, and somewhere along the line, she got a sponsor in alcohol extenomus. And I lived in this little town called Thorpe. I don't know if anyone's heard of that. A little town called Thorpe and, and her sponsor lived in Chippewa Falls, WI. So on Friday nights, we would drive down. She dragged me along. We would

drive down the Chippewa Falls so she could go to a meeting with her sponsor and I would then hook up with her son, her sponsor son David, who's a friend of mine. And they would go to the meeting of All Call Extenomous in Triple Falls and me and David would go over to Bill's house and drink and hope that our parents would get better.

I'm serious. That's what it was like. That's just what it was like. David and I started drinking and and it was a weekend thing. We would drink as much as we could during the weekends when we were together. Interesting enough,

David died six years ago

from cirrhosis to deliver. He was 35.

That's what I'll call them does. But it was just kids, you know, we was just doing what we were doing. And all I knew is that I just, I never liked the taste of beer. And just being truthful here. I just never, I mean, I just, you had, I just had to slam the first one. Once the first one was down, then it was fine. You know what I mean? It was I was, it didn't matter anymore.

Brandy, different story. Absolutely loved Brandy, just couldn't have enough of that.

What else happened when I was doing it was AI mean I was struggling because I don't I'm not going to share a great deal about my drunk log. I'll share enough that you can understand that I qualify for Alcoholics Anonymous. So I do qualify. I can guarantee you that I qualified long before I actually got here. But

you know, as the book also and drugs are part of my story, you know, I know sometimes I've spoken to meetings, I'll call it Anonymous and there's like some hardcore just chronicle and they don't want to hear about the drugs. Well, you know what, if you actually read the book of Alcoholics Anonymous, it talks about the description of the alcoholic and it actually talks about how as some of us progress,

we get prescribed set of tips or morphine. That happened for me. You know, I just if you handed me a pill, I didn't ask what it was. I just took it. You know, when it was a birth control pill, of course it didn't do anything. But if if you handed me a joint, I didn't care. I just smoked it. If it was there, I took it. You know what I know today that I didn't know then, but what I know today because I worked through the steps and I've taken a personal inventory,

alcohol was reliable. That's why I was what I used. That's what it was always there because it was reliable. I knew what it would do for me.

And with drugs, I mean, there's no quality control out there. You have no idea what it would do to you until you had it in you, you know? So again, that was just my experience. I just, I would use whatever there.

I lived out in the country and you know, in Wisconsin we have this wonderful country bars.

I don't know if any of you have ever noticed those.

And I was about 6 miles out in the country and a half a mile down the road was a bar called Aquarium Bar. And that was a cool thing for me. You know, when I was about 1314,

it was really cool is if you drank enough and smoked some dope and sat at the bar, you could just space out and watch the fish swim around. And I was, unless you threw up and then they'd all run away and they wouldn't come back. But I loved Aquarium Bar. It was a Gray bar. And one night, I remember this distinctly. I had a friend of mine, I think I was actually 15 at this time. Her name was Lynn. She showed the locker right next to me. In high school, I had this plan to go out. I would do things like

I'd be running out of house on Friday afternoon

and my dad would look at me and say be home by midnight. And Sunday night, right before midnight, I come running in the house and he didn't tell me which night. You know,

that was what I usually do, but I was running out. I remember setting up this plan with Lynn because I think I'd gotten into trouble or something. I wasn't supposed to be out late.

Truthfully, I don't remember. I just remember setting up this plan where Lynn would pick me up at like 11:00 down by aquarium bar and we had, you know, go to bar party to go to a bar

and, and I remember sitting in the ditch, you know, I snuck out of the house. That wasn't that hard to do anymore. And I was sitting in ditch. The car came up and there's Lynn in the car picking me up. And Lynn was and I'm 15 years old and Lynn was an attractive young lady. And sitting in the car also was her sister Sue, who was also a young, attractive lady. And it was one of those cars where,

you know, if I could, I could have sat in the middle in the front, you know, between the two of them. Made perfect sense to me at 15 years old, right? Well, as I get up to the car and Sue's getting out so I can get in the car, I notice in the back there's two cases of beer.

And I mean, it's instinctual. In the blink of an eye. I sat him back. Of course I'm going to sit him back, you know, But it just tells me where my priorities were. It just, it was that way. It was just like that. It was just like that.

Actually, Lynn and Sue ended up, I just thought of that. They, they, they sang at our wedding. I just remembered that

small world

as I continued to drink,

a lot of things would continue to happen to me. I, I seem to always get into trouble when I was already in trouble, Meaning I would, you know, if I was already in detention, I would still get in trouble when I'm in detention. I mean, if we smoked some, and seriously, I mean, usually there would be a bottle of vodka in my locker in my high school. I mean, that was always right up there in the back and right. And if Bill grabbed me or somebody else and we'd smoke some dope. I remember one time

I just remember being really hungry.

OK, Now I got up in the morning and had some vodka, smoked a little something on the side and, and, and there were like, I don't know, they didn't refill the machines, but there was no potato chips. There was absolutely nothing in these machines. And so me and Chuck decided of course that if we can't eat here, we're going to have to leave the school to get something to eat because we can't survive the next class without something to eat. So we left, of course, went to the grocery store and I end up getting, I don't know why, usually it was potato chips, but they had these really big Donuts.

It was they call him Bigfoot. I mean, it looked like a Bigfoot and really good Donuts. And so we bought some Donuts and we were sneaking while I was trying to sneak into the back of the high school and the principal standing there, Mr. Conroe, and he looks at us and and he had some choice words for me and Chuck and what's, you know, that part I could live with. I mean, I know I was, you know, I knew I was wrong, but he took the Donuts.

And that really pissed me off.

And this is the way it works for me. OK, this is the way it works for me.

I wreak havoc with people, places and things and not necessarily in that order. And nor do I need to be under the influence of alcohol or be drunk to do that. OK, And it doesn't take a lot for me to to grab a resentment. Now, all this seems kind of funny and maybe all that I'll maybe not that significant, but the truth was a week later, Mr. Conroy couldn't get out of his chair.

Seriously, they couldn't. He couldn't. He couldn't get up out of his chair and they had to call EMT's to cut him out of his chair because I had super glued him to his chair.

Now, again, all this seems kind of fun. It's not. I mean, I don't want to hurt other people, but that's the way I did things. If I had a resentment against you, I was going to get you and you just didn't know when, OK? You just didn't know when. And I would hold those things and I would stay angry. I can remember at 16 thinking how can I get rid of my parents

because they're problematic and they're problematic because they keep getting in my way. I just want to drink, that's all I want to do, and they just keep getting in my way.

So one night comes along

and and it wasn't an unusual thing also for, you know, my parents call the police and, you know, everybody's looking for me. And, you know, that midnight thing. And I remember one night I'm sitting at this restaurant because I was a black girl drinker. You know, I drank and I would black out and I would come to you. OK. And what I mean by that, if those of us experienced that, I mean, I would come to and I'd be doing a lot of different things. I could be driving a car. I could be sitting at somebody's house that I did not know I came to once in Indianapolis. I have no idea to this day why I was in Indianapolis,

but I was in Indianapolis. So I would just come to and, and I remember coming to this restaurant in Thorpe and it was, I don't know, two, 3:00 in the morning and Chad and Bill was sitting across a table from me and, and everybody's laughing. And I could not tell you what been going on for the last few days. I just, it wasn't there and, and Chad had this malt in his face and I thought it was funny. So I started laughing and then somebody and then everybody stopped laughing and I couldn't figure out why everybody stopped laughing and somebody tapped me on the shoulder.

I turn around, my mom and dad are standing there. They've been looking for me for a few days. And there was a police officer with them too. And maybe that's why everybody stopped laughing. Occurred to me then. Anyway, I can remember again, bits and bits and pieces of that night. I remember them taking me home. I got a nice discussion with the police officer again and

and I remember putting the barrel of a shotgun in my mouth. I remember that distinctly now. Is it? I came to in the morning,

didn't feel the best, but I came too. And I knew something was wrong because the gun was gone. I'm a shotgun on my room. I went downstairs. There's a big bullet hole in the kitchen wall where I put a round through. And I didn't know it was me, but I guess I did. My parents were sitting in the living room and they told me to come down and sit there, and I did. And here's another part I have to just bring out because people in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous want to talk about shame, OK? And I know what shame is.

That night my mom ran up town in her vehicle to get a police officer because she needed help. And she didn't do that because she was ashamed.

She did that because she was desperate.

She was desperate because her 16 year old son had just tried killing her. She was desperate.

That's what happens with alcoholism. My experience.

My parents told me that I was going to go down to Chipotle Falls and talk to a counselor, and my honest guy thought was that's not a bad idea. You guys need help,

not a bad idea. You guys might be able to find something you can use, maybe be better parents, you know, something like that.

So on Monday, and I'll never forget this because I was trying to make something to eat and I did wallet it often, but I was making some hamburgers and my dad just came up to the stove and shut the stove off and said, you're coming with us. OK, grab the hamburgers. And I went in the car and to jolt me down, Ellie Phillips Treatment Center in Chippewa Falls. Making a long story really short is I did end up talking to this counselor. They just left out the part about how long it would be. I'd be talking to this counselor because they left and I stayed there. Never. They never told me that part,

just left that right out. Oh, that irritated me. And I fell again years later. And this I share because it gives you an idea of how severe things had gotten. They had wanted to put me in a place called Fairview Deaconess, which was a locked inpatient facility in Minneapolis for adolescents. And the only reason they put me at Ellie Phillips, who was an open campus, is because two months prior to this, I tried killing myself. It's a long story. I dove off Cliff land on a rock and I it would take me half an hour to walk from here to those doors. I mean, seriously, I just could hardly walk. So they felt comfortable putting me somewhere was still an open.

So I spent 30 some days there, and at this point I knew there was a problem in my life.

OK, He didn't take a rocket scientist figure that out. And chances are I was praying. I'll call it. I just didn't care. Truthfully, I just didn't care that much.

They told me go means of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And just on a side note, I will try to keep this to an hour because my, my caboose can can endure what my, my mind can absorb what my caboose can endure. That's what I wanted to say without swearing. Anyway, he told me to go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. And so the very first meeting I ever went to was a Tuesday night in Stanley, WI, 8:00 And I walked in there and everybody was like ancient, you know?

I mean, they were like in their 40s, you know?

I mean, the closest person my age was my mom

and but they seem really nice. I mean, they seem, they shook my hand and they seem very nice. Not well, but they seem nice. And I and I just wish them well. You know, I wasn't that impressed with Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm just being honest here. It's just my first mean of Alcoholics Anonymous that I went to. I didn't go there because I had a desire to stop drinking. I didn't go there because I was, I wanted to change my life or any of those things. I went there to get the heat off. That's just honest kind of truth. I just, I just wanted people to get off my back. I,

my parents get away, some police officers, specific ones, my brother and some other relatives and the principal, they're still after me for some reason. And I just wanted people to get off my back. So I would still go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous again, not because I wanted to be sober. Actually, what, what went through my mind is OK, if I'm an alcoholic, then I should just smoke some weed. That's what I'm going to do. I'm just going to smoke pot and

and I did, I don't know. I made me three or four days out of treatment and I probably

made it a week or two, maybe two weeks, I don't honestly remember, before I started drinking again.

And so I would then go, this is what I would do. I would then go to means of Alcoholics Anonymous and be blown out of my mind at times because some of us experience, I'm sure we stand outside it, means of Alcoholics Anonymous and people will talk about things they've done and laugh if you ever have noticed that. And some of the things we're talking about I didn't think were that funny really. And so I couldn't believe you guys were sober. You had to be going to the bars afterwards. So I would go to the bar afterwards, make sure you guys weren't there.

So that's what I would do. There would be times I would go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous with the bottle of Brandy in my inside jacket pocket because why wait? Really? You know why wait?

A honestly, years later, this was probably 8 years ago, I was at my Home group, which was actually Sunday night in Chippewa Falls at that time. And my old sponsor was there, Rick, and he was telling my story to one of the guys I sponsored at the time about how I would go to meetings with Brandon Win inside jacket pocket.

And I thought nobody would knew, you know, Rick knew all what. Anyway, if you haven't caught on to this, I was sort of a binge drinker. And and when I could, when I started, I couldn't stop. See, I take a drink, the drink takes a drink and the drink takes me. That's the simplicity of my drinking. Once I start, I cannot predict what will occur, what will happen. I simply am gone. That's what happens. And I got on a binge that I wanted to stop, and I couldn't stop, but I wanted to.

And I remember coming to standing outside Ellie Phillips treatment center,

um, and the girl I was with a girl long story, ain't going there, but she was walking in the treatment center and I'm standing her door open by the car and I'm like, where you going? And, and, and I remember her turning around, looking at me saying, well, I need some help. I'm going to go into treatment. I was like, well, good for you. There's a whole bottle of peppermint stops in the back of the car. What's the hurry? You know, So I drank what the rest of the peppermint schnapps and I went into the treatment center and here's what I had.

Here's what I had. I had

I had a duffel bag with a couple pairs of jeans AT shirt, a tape player, brilliant Squire tape because I was cool

and a car had stolen. That's how I got there and a car that had stolen and I walked into the treatment center and there were two nurses on duty. I'm going to share this again because it's just my story and I always had a problem with nurses back then. I don't know why, but I told the first one she looked like a reject out of a horror movie, and

she kind of did. Truthfully, she did. Anyway, the other one,

the other one, the other one is really big teeth and I was a little scared of her, so I didn't say anything to her.

And back then, I don't know if it's still true this day, but back then when you were in detox, it gave you these pajamas to wear. They call them detox pajamas and I call them monkey suits, you know, But I don't know to this day if the nurse, she gave me these pajamas to wear and told me to go in the bathroom and change. And so I went there. And I don't know this day if she was, if she was just irritated with me, if she honestly made a mistake because I, I put the bottoms on, wasn't that hard, not a big deal. And I went to put what I thought with the tops. She'd given me two bottoms. There's a hole there. I couldn't get my head through it.

I tried. I really tried. And I remember falling into the bathtub, banging my head. Nurse comes running in to ask me if I'm having a problem. No, I'm fine, thank you. You know. Good. Good. They wouldn't give me any more pajamas. They just gave me this robe to wear after that for the rest of the night.

So I'm sitting in detox

and a thought came

and people have asked me many times what happened? What was what happened?

And the thought was this, I don't want to live like this anymore. That's what it was. That's all it was. I don't want to live like this anymore. And I don't care what it takes to stay sober. I don't care anymore what I got to do.

If there's a divine intervention anywhere,

I think it started there for me. I didn't know it, didn't realize it, didn't comprehend it. I just didn't want to live like this anymore.

So I went through treatment there

and I'd love, I would, I would love to tell you that that I stopped drinking and everything changed for me. That was not my experience. In fact, the book actually says very clearly that stopping drinking is just the beginning. It is just the beginning. The actual applications of the principles and values of the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is then the challenge to practice these principles in all our affairs.

That's the difficult part. So yeah, again, I'd love to tell you I changed dramatically. Didn't happen. Found out that you can't break into the kitchen at night and steal shrimp. They really get really irritated about that.

And they would take all my clothes and it would put me back in those detox pajamas whenever I got in trouble. Honest to God, I wore those pajamas more than I wear my regular clothes when I was in treatment. It's just, you know, it couldn't stop myself. Well, and I love shrimp. OK?

I still do. Anyway, so I leave. I leave treatment and they tell me I need to go back to means of alcohol extonymous to tell me I need to find a sponsor. Yeah, maybe they told me that the first time. I didn't hear, but

so I started going back to this meeting and I started listening to a guy that I actually, I used to really, even though I wasn't serious about being sober, I used to like listening to him at the meetings. He had a lot of profound things to say. I didn't understand them, but they sounded really cool. So one night, I was probably

not a month out of treatment yet, maybe three weeks, maybe two weeks. I just remember it wasn't very long. And I went up to wreck after a meeting on a Friday night in Connaught, Wisconsin. And I looked in and I said, Rick, would you be my sponsor? And I can be honest with you guys, that was the most frightening thing I think I've ever done in my life to that point.

And I knew fear,

but that terrified me because if he said no, where would I be?

Where would I be? So Rick looked at me right square in the eye. And he said, are you willing to go any lengths to stay sober? I was like, dude, in my mind, I'm like, dude, I just got out of treatment. You got to mellow a little bit. And I was like, yeah, I think so. And he looked and he said, no, are you? Aren't you? And I said, yeah, I am. And he got a list of things. He got a pen out and a paper, and he got a list of things I had to do each day to stay sober. He said, you got to read Chapter 5, How it works every morning you wake up. I was like the whole chapter. He's like, no really, Have we seen a person

L through AB and C? He said. I have no understanding of your God or your higher power, but you need to ask your God for help in the morning. You need to thank your higher power at night,

he said. We're going to go through steps together. I'm like, well, you know, Rick, I've been to treatment twice, done it a couple times. Ready. You know, it's like, no, we're going to go through steps together, OK.

And then he did it.

And then he set the hook. And the old timers and Alcoholics Anonymous know how to do this, and they know how to do it well because he looked me in the eye and they said, I'm going to guarantee you two things. The first thing is you never have to take another drink again. As long as you live in my mind. I'm thinking, you're insane. And he says, you don't believe me. He said. I said, no, I don't. He said, that's OK, He said, but I'm going to guarantee you one more thing. You're never going to have to feel lonely again.

You're never going to have to feel lonely again.

And I knew what he meant.

I knew what he meant. It wasn't just a word to me.

I've been lonely in my whole life. I've been terrified my whole life

and so I did the only thing I could do. I started to follow Rick around like a little puppy dog

and I did whatever he suggested,

no matter what it was. I'd love to tell you that I almost thought he had good ideas.

I didn't. I thought some of his ideas were pretty dumb, but I did them anyway because I didn't know. He said you have to go start making coffee. You have to be here half an hour before the meeting, maybe 45 minutes. Be better. Well, first of all, no one would trust me to drive their car for some reason. And so I had to get rides to meetings. No one would let me drive their car. But I talked my parents and let me come to the meeting 45 minutes early so I can make coffee. And I don't drink coffee. I don't drink coffee to this day,

but I had to make coffee and then after about 3 months, he said now you can start

cleaning up after me and you get the broom and clean up and put the chairs away. OK, now I didn't know then What I know now is what Rick was doing was keeping me, keeping me busy. He was keeping me busy enough till I could start working the steps. He knew that I didn't know that and he kept me doing all these things going to meetings, taking me to to Appleton. I'll never forget the first area of meeting hours. I was I was just telling Mary Jo Ball. It was absolutely insane. And people like standing on tables screaming at each other.

I'm not kidding. It was crazy back then. And I didn't know what I was doing there, you know? Why am I here? Rick's just like you. Come with me

and I started on a on a journey behind my wildest

drunken dreams

truly is

we went to these steps and that's why I need to begin the first step says we admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable.

And what Rick explained to me was the first part of the step had nothing to do with the second part of the step because there's a hyphen there me just separation of thought. I didn't know that. I thought my life was unmanageable because I drank.

No, he's able to clearly point out. First of all, I had all the requirements I needed to get the first step. I didn't need any more practice then. I was powerless of alcohol. I didn't have a difficult time concept with that. Certainly my life was unmanageable. I can mess up my life today and I don't need to take a drink to do that. I really don't.

He explained that to me. He made it clear to me. There's a description of alcoholic. I fit it to a tee. I had no problems with any of that.

Step two came to believe

power grain ourselves could restore us to sanity. That was a bit of a struggle. I'm just being truthful here. I had no religious background. I have none. We went to the bar on Sunday mornings. That's what we did. So I have no church, I have no religious education, no background in it. And he said I got to pick a God, I got to have a higher power. And I'm like, I don't have any wreck. You don't understand. That was one of my favorite words. You don't understand. And Rick would always come back with we seek to understand rather than to be understood. Now, I didn't know that was part of 11 step prayer, but he was good at that.

Um, so OK, all right. So I said I'm going to pick a that'll be my higher power and he's like, that's fine, that's fine. There's no problems with that. You just need a higher power. Okay,

after about 3 months, I guess. September, four months actually. I remember going up to Rick on a Friday night after the meeting. I said, you know, Rick,

I need like a spiritual awakening. I need like, I need something big, you know, pardon the waters, burning Bush, something, you know, I just need something. And Rick just smiled and said, yeah, I just keep saying your prayers. Exactly one week later,

I'm driving home as Friday night, middle of December. It was the very first time somebody let me drive with a car since I've been on treatment. Second time. And I'm going north, 2 miles east of Stanley up on the Highway 29. And I came up with this little hill and I'm not, I'm actually, I'm not speeding. I'm not in a hurry. I'm not drunk, you know, just trying to get home so I can get home, get changed, get to the mean and cannot Friday night. And I come up with a little hill and I went to hit the brake. And as soon as I hit the brake, I realized, yeah, this sucks because I'm not going to stop. It's glare ice,

you know, and you realize, of course, there's a blinking eye, right? But in that same instance that I realized that it was glare ice in the corner of my eye, I caught an 18 Wheeler coming down the highway. And so my immediate thought was I'm going to take the ditch. You know, that's about all I can do here. So I took my foot off the brake and I punched the accelerator and the car did a complete 180 and the semi hit me in the passenger side and sent me 200 feet down the highway.

And I gotta say this because it still bothers me this day. I actually just heard this two weeks ago. Somebody told me about a little Fender Bender they got in and they were like, it felt like I got hit by a Mack truck. I'm here to tell you, unless you get hit by a Mack truck, you have no flipping idea what it feels like.

It was unbelievable. And I remember a car coming to a stop and I wanted the engine was still running. So I I thought I should shut the engine off because maybe it'll blow up. I didn't know. But I couldn't shut it off because like the steering wheel was over here. And I thought, well, maybe I should get out of the car, but I couldn't because the door was jammed and the other door was like here.

So I just thought, well, there's no window. I just went out the window, right? And I remember walking over the ditch and laying down in the snow and screaming, why? Why me?

This is the first time somebody trusted me to drive their car. It's done. Car is gone. Car's gone.

Officer Seraphin Frank, as I knew him. Stop by a few minutes later and I'm still sitting in the snow, right? And Frank comes walking up to me. I'll never forget this. And he says

he looked and he said blow into this and I got out my three month medallion and I said, Frank, I'm sober. No blow into this. Frank, I'm, I had to blow into it, which was fine.

I, I went into his car. I started defrost a little bit, you know, some glass in my eye. And actually, Frank had a little concern, drove me to the hospital.

I walked away, no broken bones, nothing. And I remember calling Rick later that night to explain to him why I had missed the meeting, that my Home group. And he said that was the only good excuse he'd ever heard from misdemeanor of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was like screw you

and about 3 weeks later I was talking to him about step three and he asked me very simple question what were you screaming at?