Steps 6 through 11 at the Men Among Men group's conference in Reykjavik, Iceland

You know, for the first time since I've known Chris, I think I know something he doesn't. We had a translator back there, Sam and I,

I swear to God, this guy, this guy, we're back there cracking up. You're sitting next to a lot of disease right there. That's a very sick man.

Well,

you know, I still can't believe that I'm in Iceland and I want to thank the committee from the bottom of my heart for the opportunity of a lifetime to come here and hang out with like-minded people.

We get the opportunity to do this all over and it's just not always the welcome mat, you know what I mean? The attendance today for the workshops was over the top. We expected it to diminish at some point, but you guys just kept hanging in there. We had to wake you up every now and then beating on the podium, but we're glad you're here.

My name is Larry Scott and I am an alcoholic

and I'm free tonight, on December 31st, 1987, God intervened in my life. And there's something I want to say at this point based on the, the, the, the, the nature of this conference that I've never said at the podium before.

I got a lot of heroes out there.

I listen to a lot of speakers.

I befriended a lot of those people,

but until Chris Reimers CD got into my hand some years ago, I walked around in a, in a, in a, in an existence of secrecy and, and I, I withheld what I thought and what I felt because it wasn't accepted in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I said things and I behaved in a manner that was

people pleasing and I heard this guy and I thought, wow, he's saying the stuff that I believe the way I feel.

I've since become somewhat unpopular, but it's OK. I'm not here to make people happy. I'm not here to piss people off.

But now

when I hooked up with Chris and, and, and the guys that he is associated with all over the country,

there's just a huge growing segment of our society that I'm so proud to be a part of.

And this society is part of you. You're part of that.

When I tell you that I'm free tonight, it means that I've recovered. I've recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body, and I no longer have to dance with the beast.

When I say that the heads are doing this because you get it, I don't have to do that anymore. I walk around the planet of Freeman.

My Home group is called We are not a glum lot. We're a book study at Joe and Charlie style book study we made Thursday nights at 8:00 in Atlanta. If you're ever in our town, please come see us.

We have a lot of fun in There's 100 and 5000 and 75 people. They show up every Thursday night and they're not there for the it's not a social hour. We have a lot of fun, but we tell the truth there, and we tell the truth out of this, out of this book.

I have no opinions about this. This book doesn't need my interpreting. It needs my doing.

In the early days, I mean, like in the infancy before there was an Alcoholics Anonymous,

Ebby Thatcher hooked up with Bill Wilson after his experience and and little piece of time with the with the Oxford groups. And they told Debbie, they said you're going to need to carry this message after somebody else if you want to sustain this newfound sobriety. But he knew about Bill had they drank together, They were Mad Men together. So he says, I got just the guy. I'm going to go over and seal Bill. He needs my help.

And I'm not going to bore you with that story. It's in the book. But what he did is he showed up at Town's hospital and he carried Bill Wilson through the steps in days.

And I tell you that because if I want what they've got, and I damn sure do I want all the goodies in this book, I got to do what they did. I can't water it down and and change it to where it's comfortable or it fits for me. I don't know anything about treatment centers. Never went to one that was a luxury that was not on the on the docket.

My story is, is an Angel called Talmud Scott. My brother showed up in my life and he placed my hand in yours.

And my story is real love,

real simple. If you want the short version, it's kind of like that cat that screwed the skunk.

I didn't get all I wanted, but I got all I could stand.

But I was dying out there.

So

Silkworth, Doctor Silkworth shows up in Bill's room and he tells Bill because Bill thinks he's just morally unfit, just no good like most of us felt. And he told him, he says, buddy says you got a disease.

And he said it's, it's a, it's a, it's an obsession of the mind. And when you start thinking about drinking, you cannot with sufficient force, stop that thought process. And you drink, they'll say, yeah, that's me. He says. And once you start drinking, you set into motion the, the, the 2nd component of this thing is called the allergy of the body. You're allergic to alcohol. And when you start drinking, you cannot stop. Bill said Yep, that's me.

And he tied it all together with that spiritual malady thing.

Well, Bill thought, well, hell, what he knows from and, and, and this information about carrying the message. He grabbed a Bible because that's all they had. There wasn't a book. There was number A, A. And he started going up and down the bowerys in the alleyways, the ballrooms of New York City, snatching drunks off of the bar stools and beating them over the head with the Bible. Nobody's getting sober.

So he goes back to Silky

5:00 or so months later, and he said, Doctor Silkworth, I can't get anybody sober,

Silk Horse says, Buddy says, you got to stop beating these drunks over the head with the Bible. He says they're not going to stand for it.

He says go out and tell these people what I told you.

Tell them about the obsession of the mind and the allergy of the body. Bill. Tell them what I told you. Just so happens as next prospect was a guy by the name of Doctor Robert Holbrooke Smith in Akron, OH.

It's really a miracle how those two men met. But they met in the gatehouse of the Cyberlink mansion. An heir to the Goodyear Time Rubber Company. Very small room.

Bill showed up and

Doctor Smith have been on a run. He's snaking and he's shaking and he's sick and he already extracted a promise from his wife to get him out of there in 15 minutes so he could go get the booze that he needed because he's sick. He's got to feed that that demon. He walked in the room and he ran his shaking hand across the table at Bill Wilson. He says, Mr. Mr. Wilson, I don't know what you think you can do for me. He says I've been prayed over and and and carved up more than a Christmas goose.

Bill took his hat off and looked him dead in the eye. And he says I'm not here for you, Doctor Smith, I'm here for me.

Because Bill knew that the 5 1/2 months that he had under his belt, the only way it sustained that was to carry this message yet to another alcoholic and

look around. This is a, this is the result of that evening. This thing's all over the world. I heard the other day there's 150 meetings or 150,000 sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous and Iran, and they're meeting in the mosques over there. Get out. How does that happen?

I love it.

So early on, before we had this program, it sounds to me like Bill was doing some good 5th tradition work, huh? We get 12 step stuff. That was on the day before Mother's Day of 1935, May the 12th. And it wasn't long before they started carrying the message and my friend Chris alluded to it today. It took them a long time to get just 10 guys was 18 months, right? And today

our numbers have exploded.

My whole life I've loved things that are real loud. Motorcycles, cars, fast cars, hot rods. Love beautiful women. Still do. Still got two big motorcycles. They make a lot of racket, burn high test gas and they will burn the highway up. I love that stuff. I love beautiful women and my God, you guys have got an abundance of them. You got to, you know, please, we have to go to a meeting every day for a month to find as many women in in a a.

And most of you guys are overpaid. You're way out of your league with some of these gals.

Just saying.

We talked about the three types of drinkers today. There's four types actually. Social drinker, hard drinker, problem drinker, and a real alcoholic. And that's me. I'm a real alcoholic. I've never had one of anything.

And what I've learned over the years, if alcohol doesn't do something for you, it won't do anything to you.

I'm I'm a single guy and I'm out on the dating scene and I went out with a gal recently and I said

server came by and says what could I get you to drink? And she knew I was in I was in a A and she says, do you mind if I have some wine? I said knock up itself.

I mean, there's a refrigerator full of booze back at the hotel, but it's not going Larry,

don't do that.

So she orders this glass of wine. It comes out and it sits on the table and I start looking at the glass of wine because I'm trying to figure out if she's going to be my future ex-wife, right? I just got to I got to monitor the drinking. So, you know, she takes a sip and

waiter comes over and says, would you like an appetizer? Yeah, the appetizer comes. She sips the wine. I'm watching the wine,

the salad comes, she's sipping, main course comes, she's sipping and she says could I get a glass of tea

and what's in that one? So the T comes, the meal's finished.

Waiter comes over, says would you like an after dinner cocktail or a cup of coffee? I said I'll have a coffee. She says I think I'll have a coffee too. There's a half a glass of wine, original glass.

So we set the coffee. We get a piece of pie and still a half a glass of wine. The check comes, we get settled up and I look at her and I'm really serious. I said are you going to finish that? She says, Oh, no, Oh, no,

I'm beginning to feel it.

The classic one is, oh, no, I'm beginning to feel drowsy. Well, my response is always the same. Push through that on the other side of that is like Disney World, man, come on, let's go. You know, drink up.

So my first drink happened when I was about six years old. Moonshine liquor in the South part of Georgia. Here's what happened in that first set. It burned like hell. Moonshine, probably 150 proof and it smell like the devil.

I wanted to, I wanted to throw it back up. Nothing. It wasn't like oh I had my first drink and I was free. Not my story. I swore I'd never do that again. Most horrible tasting stuff. Why would anybody do that? Little did I know I would chase that horrible experience for the rest of my days.

The progression went from

I grew up in Jacksonville, FL, which is the northern part of the state butts right up to the South part of Georgia and in the summertime my parents would send me to to Georgia to work in the tobacco fields for my uncles in that well, I was so small that I really couldn't do any of the physical labor, so they would put me on the tractors.

Tractors are loud, they burn a lot of gas. I love things that do that. So at lunch, when the

when the farmhands were in the house having lunch, my job was to take the tractors out to these big 1000 gallon tanks and hand pump gas into them.

Well, there's no automatic cut off on them, so I'm going to lay it up on the hood of this tractor and I'm pumping and I'm listening and I'm sniffing

well, then walk out and find me passed out on the ground underneath this tractor.

I discovered early on I love gas. So at the end of the summer, I went back home to Jacksonville. I went right down the street to the gas station. Got a job. Makes sense. I mean, if you like to, if you like to drink, bartend man, but I'm into the gas gig, you know, So I'm down here and and there's no automatic cut off some pretty old. So I pulled anything I'm listening for the gas to come in the film neck of the gas tank and it find me passed out in the driveway. These gas stations with gas fueling everywhere. I love gas.

Well, some years later I discovered that you could put some airplane model airplane glue in a bag and escape. I went to jail for sniffing glue. Me and fourteen others before school one morning huff and glue in the alley.

They don't know why they locked us up. They couldn't figure out what was in the bag. They knew it had to be something illegal because we looked way too happy.

But, you know, do you see where this is going?

I have a buddy back in Jacksonville that has run with me. He stuck everything in his arm and his face. He drank it. I mean, we did it all together and he's not one of us.

He can just say no.

But back in the day, me and this guy's names Danny, we would scour the alleys in the in the metro area in downtown Jacksonville. And it was we're back, back behind the retail shops where the where, the, where the winos and the drunks would go back to to drink the report and that. And they would discard their bottles with Danny and I would walk up and down the aisles, alleys, and we would find a large bottle, spin the cap off, throw it away, and we would pick up whatever bottle was there and whatever remnant was in that bottle we poured into one bottle port.

Bourbon, vodka, gin.

Lovely combination. And then after we get about this much in a court, we'd flip a coin. Here's the catch. Not to see who had to drink it, but who got to drink it

and into the next day, you know, the cycle would start again. So I've always chased that buzz and I'm not real selective on on how I get there. I just want to get there. Glue, gas

wino cocktail.

My story is this. I've always been wide open, never had one of anything. My brother who who twilst at me our slogan was OD or don't screw with it if I didn't do enough to where I almost needed to go to the hospital.

I didn't do enough. If I didn't get the crap scared out of me,

I got to do a little more.

I'm not a social drinker. I'm not a social user

and my favorite thing to do is more. I love more I I got married early. I was a child of the 60s and a gal that I had gone to school with.

She was my out. I was raised in a Baptist home and I needed to get out of the house. There was no alcohol. You couldn't say damn in that house, they kick your ass for saying that. So I needed to get out of that house and she was my ticket out of that Baptist home. So at 18, I got married. Sounded like a good idea at the time.

We set up house and it was a very violent five year deal.

A lot of everything. And is it OK to talk about drugs in here?

Well, we did a lot of dope and we drank a lot of booze, a lot of violence.

And before I got divorced, I mean, when I married this woman, she was 5 feet tall and weighed about 96 lbs. At five years, she's still a little less than 5 feet tall and weighed 175. Do the math. I mean,

when she hauled ass, it took two trips,

but I'm in the hospital. I'm in the hospital with a with a kidney stone one day and and I meet this chick through a turn of events that that

I kind of interviewed her covertly and I found out that she liked to drink and use the way I did. Not only that, she had a key to the candy store because she worked for a doctor.

And I'm thinking this is cool. So we set up house together. I get a divorce and Debbie and I set up house together. And when the office would close at night, we go down to there, go down there with the key and they had these big jugs of sack and all and seek a bravitol and gallons. Spin the cap off of it. Just fill up Baggies.

I like Debbie,

really like Debbie a lot.

Debbie and I, we had some friends over one night. We were living in a, in a, in a house that was built at the end of a dock out in the middle of the Saint Johns River, big River in, in Jacksonville. And our house that way out in the middle of the river at about 100 yards out this dock. And we're out there smoking a big hookah pipe one day. And my buddy Joe was with me and he goes, I mean, we're pretty, you know, we're pretty ripped. He goes, dude,

do you know anybody in a boat? And I go, well, dude, we're in a river.

And I look and this boat is booking, man. It's coming right for the dock. And about that time, helicopter starts hovering. I look at the other end of the dock up where the land is, and there's like 15 cars, unmarked narcotics, guys. And you know where that story goes? We ended up in jail, made the front lines of the headlines of the paper and TV, and Shameful. Shameful.

Didn't tap the brake, just kept running.

We're in 1971 and I had the opportunity to go into the Rock'n'roll radio business.

And since this is Iceland, you may not know this, but in Jacksonville, FL at that particular era, starting around 1969 up through probably mid 80s, early 80s, it was a Mecca for southern rock'n'roll bands. The Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd 38 Special, Molly Hatchet, and the list just goes on. And while I'm at this radio station,

these bands would come in to promote their new albums and, and to do interviews and that kind of stuff. Well, I hooked up with them. They like to drink and use like Mad Men will so do it I. So we hooked right up and and.

I ended up leaving the radio station after a period of time. Well, several radio stations. I drank my way through a bunch of them, but I ended up going to work with the with the management team for the Lynyrd Skynyrd Band. And this was

1974.

And the part of this story that I'm going to share with you is not about glamour and blitz, because if you put a dollar with it, you can get some coffee.

Because I never hit the golden ring.

For a long time, I thought my identity was wrapped around being in the rock'n'roll business with this famous band. And the point I want to make with you at this point is is called God's grace. Sam hit on it this morning. Grace is undeserved favor, unmerited mercy, if you will. And there were so many times out there

running like I was running that I should have died.

I should have died at my own hand, either by an overdose or at the hand of some some shady people I was dealing with. And it came close a lot of times. I've been held at gunpoint a number of times. But the point is, this has nothing to do with luck, has nothing to do with coincidences.

We were in a biker bar one night, me and the bass player from Skynyrd and it's called Fling. Nasty Saloon, Perry, upscale place.

And this guy comes in and we're all pretty loaded on whatever it was. And this guy isn't in the winter time and he goes, does anybody like to fly? And I said, I love to fly.

He says, well, let's go for a rise. Really cold. It's about 10:00 at night. So I never asked for his pilot's license. Hell, I just got in the car and we went. We went out to hurl on field and any parks. He said, wait right here, I'll be back. It's a grass parking place for all these airplanes. And there's a little trailer over there,

and then there was a small runway. And he gets out of the car, goes in his trailer, and he comes back out and I see he's got keys. And he jumps in a plane and he's in there for a few minutes, nothing happened. He jumps out, he goes back and he comes back with more keys. At this point, I realize we're stealing an airplane.

So finally, luck of the draw, this guy gets his puppy fired up. He's in the plane and you hear Ryan, you'd see the flaps and he at the, the, the, the doors open and he goes, come on. And I'm thinking, you know, if I had good sense, I'd have said no, it's OK. But I didn't.

I'm an excitement junkie. Let's go. It's adrenaline. So I jump in the plane and we take off

and it's not going well. Thank God I'm loaded, it's not going well. And he says where do you want to go? I said, well, let's buzz fling nasties.

And he did. He buzzed right over the top of the power poles and does this. And there's this bridge on the in the over the Timaquana River, and it's got this archway, like this

little small archway. We flew under that, right over, right over the top of the water.

It's dope, man. Ain't nothing but dope. So

God had a shot. That night passed so

I had a deal. Get sideways and a guy owed me a bunch of money.

And one Wednesday afternoon, beautiful, sunshiny day, I show up at his house to collect this money. And he's in the sunroom of his house.

He's got a needle in his arm. He's shooting cocaine. And I thought, well, that looks good. Did you have any more of that? And he said, yeah, back in the bedroom there's. And he told me where everything was. So I went back. And I had done that before, but not myself. Somebody else had administered it.

I went back, remember, I said I'm a pig. I'm a pig from the ground up. I went back and I, I took whatever I what I thought was right and I dropped it in a spoon,

pulled it up, holding myself off and I went bam. And all of a sudden I go,

I'm falling over, shot the mark one more time. This guy comes running in. Now, this is a healthy viral man. To my knowledge, there's no health issues at all. He comes and he grabs me by the armpits and he drags me to this other room and he's got a scuba tank. And instead of having air, he had oxygen. Instead of having a mouthpiece, he had a mask. This guy was prepared. He knew some shit like that was going to go down South.

He drags me out there,

He drives me out there and all of a sudden I'm back.

God had another shot. Not I'm not going to go into all the odysi mean it's not worth it. You get it? If you're here, you know you know what I'm talking about.

So I'm working with the Sewer Productions out of New York and we're Lynyrd Skynyrd is out doing their their tour, promoting their new album. They're they're debuting it all over. It's an international gig.

Fateful day, October of 1977.

I was an autograph signing party with these guys

and an MCA record company executive came up and I don't remember what it was, but we got into a pretty violent argument about the way this was going to go down. Well, this was the final flight of the old prop plane, the Free Bird,

and they were to land in Baton Rouge and pick up the new Learjet.

God intervened.

I did what I always did. Screw you. I'm not getting on the plane.

Later that night we got the call that

the free bird, along with all my buddies have fallen into the swamps of McComb, Ms. taking a life of a lot of really, really close friends.

Point of that is as I walked around and I tell you what a coincidence I didn't get on the plane,

what a lucky break

had nothing to do with it because see all my life I failed at everything I've attempted whether it was relationships or jobs or whatever the case may be. God had a plan for me and it's to be here with you is to take this message out and share it with those that are that are hungry for it. I didn't die that day. Skip forward life pretty much falls apart. Went through a just an ass load of money of a buddy of mines that had an ass load of money and we went through it

pretending to be in the music business and

drug sex and rock'n'roll. It didn't take long. We went through about a million and a half American. We had the big cars and fast women and all that stuff. But anyway, we both hit a bottom at the end of at the end of about a 2 1/2 year run, we both became homeless. This guy once again, he was a very very very wealthy man. At the end of the run I'm escaping Jacksonville. I moved to Atlanta to move in with my brother.

Homeless. Didn't realize it but I was. He ended up in Orlando, FL sleeping on the floor,

our music attorneys home homeless, burned it to the ground sitting. His story is mine, but he is now a sober member of a A as well over in Birmingham, AL. My friend Jan knows him.

I've been in a relationship off and on for about 10 years with a girl named Michelle. She had actually moved to Atlanta and gone to work for the same record company I did, and she liked to drink, she liked to use. But she's not one of us. She could stop.

Doctor said she was a problem user, problem drinker.

I don't understand that. No thanks, I got to go to bed. I have to work tomorrow.

Well,

it's 1980. I'm working for another record company in Atlanta, short lived because at this point, 1980, I'm unemployable and I'm not going to tell you my career history, but it's been beautiful. It's been buried and it's been beautiful. I've had jobs that people would die for that like motorcycles and music. Been fired from every one of them because they said you can't come around here smelling like that and acting like that.

You got to leave, Larry. You just can't come back here like that.

I found Freebase,

I can stop right there and y'all can fill in the blanks, couldn't you?

Freebase did the same thing for me that that Ivy Cocaine did for me, only I didn't have to stick a hole in myself

and

I look like death.

I weighed about 90 lbs and my eyes were sunk back in my head. I still carry my driver's license picture from that from September of 1987, and it doesn't even resemble me. Well, Michelle came to me and she says you're dying and you can't do it here, you've got to go. I became homeless.

I was sleeping around in abandoned cars, boxes, bridges, whatever an occasional acquaintance would allow me a night on their couch or day bed. A night

I burned it down again

and I'm staying with this gal and her teenage kids

in a suburb of Atlanta. Her name is Glenda. Not one of us, probably a banner poster child for Al Anon, but she's allowing me to to stay in this. It's not a relationship. She's being kind and I'm staying there. And I'd gone to meetings

because in October of 87, my brother, who's just older than me, he was my old running buddy. His name's Talmud. She called and he's, I don't know how he found me. He said, I understand you're in really bad shape, and if you don't get some help, you're going to die. Well, my response to him was, 'cause I'm proud. It's OK, Bob, I got this one. I'm good. He says, Larry, I know the truth, and if you don't get some help, we're going to bury you. And I said something like, what's your bright idea? And he gave me a hotline number and I called it.

Don't know who read, who led, don't know crap. But I showed up, picked up that white chip,

and I'm thinking I'm pretty proud of myself and whoever gave me the right. I said, could you pull in this liquor store? I need a couple of bottles of champagne to celebrate this. And I said, yeah. So I bought 2 bottles of champagne out of the gate. The the, the, the white chip is still warm,

but it made sense. So from early October until the end of December in 1987, I went to your meetings just like Doctor Bob did. I would get drunk every night and I would beg you to come home and let's discuss this thing called Alcoholics Anonymous because y'all were a little extreme on some of this stuff. And you looked at me like, keep coming back, dude. So

I'm not using anything but alcohol at this point, and I found out through being with you. Alcohol was my first drug, it was my last drug and it was my drug of choice, if you want to call it that. It was always on the table no matter what else was there. Alcohol was the baby man and all that other stuff that I poured in. This is my experience was nothing but fortification. If I couldn't get there quick enough with the booze, drop a couple of pills, bam, take me the rest of the way. If I'm getting just a little

loopy, do a little blow, man. Bring you right back in the zone. You can drink some more. So

December 31st 1987 Glenda is in the kitchen in our country. I know in the South we cook a thing called collard greens and and Black Eyed Peas for the for the for the New Year's Day lunches supposedly brings good luck. I've eaten enough greens to pay for this place and you know I'm still chasing the light. Anyway,

she's got this huge stock pot of collard greens on the stove and it's rolling boiling water. She's over to sink now. This woman's about 6 feet tall, allowing me to stay in her house. She's cutting up these greens and she's got the Black Eyed Peas on on the stove.

I've been drinking all day

from what I'm about from here on, what I'm going to tell you is hearsay.

I picked up the pot of boiling water

and I poured it on her arms as she was in that sink.

I proceeded to take off that western belt that I have at the big western belt buckle. I wrapped it around my hand.

I went through her house and I destroyed her house.

Thanks so much for giving me shelter and food.

Thank you for sharing your home. This is how I'm going to pay you back.

I love football. College football

January 1st, 1988 I can't tell you who played. I can't tell you who won. I have no idea. I can tell you about the shame, the guilt, the horror, the remorse,

because I could see the evidence of that last drink.

I had to go back to A&A.

You picked me up and you took me because I had no transportation. I'm still homeless.

For all intents and purposes, I'm still homeless.

Take me back to that, to that meeting

and what happened on December 31st, late in the night, God intervened.

God intervened. He put my hand in yours once again. And this time I hung on because you see, when I got here, this time, the book talks about the desperation of a drowning man. That's where I was. I couldn't live another day

in that condition.

When you go home tonight, fill up your kitchen sink with water, Take a good deep breath and stick your head in that sink. See how long your head will stay there.

Natural reflexes will make you come out and gasp for air to save your life. That's where I was at. I needed you worse than Custer needed an air strike. I needed Alcoholics Anonymous.

Here's a guy by the name of Don. He he was, he's he never took a seat. He always stood in the back of the room. How we doing on time? There aren't

good, good, good. We're good. So this guy Donnie stood in the back of the room and he would, he never sat down. He'd spin that Styrofoam cup and dig his fingernails into it. And every now and then he'd open his mouth and it was a Pearl. Don was a stone Mason, a real tough guy. And, and they, you told me I needed a sponsor, so I'd go. And when I got here, I'm the guy in the book. I didn't know the truth and the false. I was a madman. People wouldn't come up to me. They point me to the coffee and and you know,

I asked about a half dozen guys to sponsor me. They say, we'll get back with you a little crazy today. Those are the ones I like. But these guys were like, whoa. So I went to Don and I didn't want to ask Don because I knew that he was going to be the truth. And so we went to work

and we took the first three steps

and that's where that ride ended. And I'm not going to go into that because it has no redeeming qualities. But what Don did for me said you got to become self supporting through your own contributions. You got to get a job. And I said, I'll go back into radio or television. He says, Oh no, hell you want. He says that's way too high profile. You got to get a job where you're accountable.

You're going to punch a time clock, you're going to go do landscaping or flip burgers, but you're not going back into that business. I said

while I'm living at my sister's house now with her and her husband, my brother-in-law runs an automobile store, a Ford store, and I grew up with him. And I said, but how about if I go to work for for your company selling cars? He said, yeah, that'd be great. So I called Don and I said

I got a job over to Ford store selling cars. He says that's not the way this goes. He says you got to set up an interview. I'm going on the interview,

I said. I know my brother-in-law grew up with him. I don't give a damn. Set up the interview. I'm going. I went back home and said, but I got to come in and interview my brother-in-law. He doesn't get us at all. I guess. The hell are you talking about? You're Larry. I'm Bud, you got a job. Come on, I said. You don't understand. I got this Nazi for a sponsor.

So we show up the interview thing and Don sitting here and he's got these like 3 by 5 cards with all these questions and directions and demands that he's going to make of my brother-in-law.

And you know, a couple of me says he shows up on time or he's fired if he if he if he doesn't agree to stay after he's fired, he gets none of those house deals, those freebies. He works hard for everything he gets. And the only caveat, he has to have an hour a day to hook up with a a well, unless it's fine. What else? My brother-in-law is looking at me like who is this guy?

And I don't suggest so in course, in early recovery, I just don't. That's me

I was heading home one night and I shared this today in the workshop. I was heading home one night after a day at the car store and

I I was loaned a car because it didn't come back that quick. And something happened that night on on a highway running N out of Atlanta wasn't a burning Bush. It wasn't a voice, it wasn't a flash of light. It was a knowledge,

and that knowledge was that I never, ever, ever had to be alone again.

Today I can be alone in my home, can be alone riding that one of my bikes, but I'm never alone. I had this. I have this knowing that God has got me.

There's a certain sector of our of our society that and this is a warning to you guys that are new.

They're called old timers

and they're mean. They prey on the young kids.

They do despicable things. They say stuff that doesn't make any sense.

You're you're convinced after a period that they're that their senility setting in. And I was going to this meeting where my brother was the guy that 12th step me and it was a group where average somebody was about 40 years in there and the old timers were tough. I I would go in, you know, I'd have my ass kicked at the car store and I'd walk in there and there's a guy named Bob Kennett and Bob setting up the chairs and putting out the literature. Got the coffee going back then you could smoke and asteroids were out. And he said, Larry, how you doing?

I said, oh, Bob, it's been a rough day.

I really don't like selling cars. Car salesman, scum of the earth and it's in A sales manager treats me like crap. He talks down to me and Bob says, yeah, buddy. He says you're right on schedule, you exactly where you supposed to be. And I'm going, this guy needs a hearing aid.

We're sitting in a meeting one night, that discussion meeting,

never going around the room, and they were talking about whatever it was and they came to me and they said, Larry, how you doing today? I said, well, great. My morning started off a little rocky, but I used that tool that you gave me, you know, turn it over. I can start my day over anytime.

They started off really bad. I went in a customer lounge, pulled down some paper towel, got on my knees, grabbed the sink and I turned it over. Started my day over and now I'm good. Well, Jack Blaylock sitting over here, old redneck from Alabama, and Jack would smoke those Lucky Strikes down to a Roach

in Jackson. Yeah, Buddy says that, turning it over. Some good stuff.

This is back when I was in Alabama, I used to write them bad checks, he said. I turned them over to God. God turned them over to the sheriff and he locked my ass up.

I woke up one Saturday morning, early recovery, and I was doing everything you told me to do to the best of my ability. And one of the things was getting on my knees and, and, and saying please in the morning, saying that morning prayer. When I got on my knees that morning, it was lip service. There was nothing coming from inside. I was growing a conscience. I didn't know it at the time, but my prayer was empty. And so I got on the phone and I called all these people. It was a Saturday morning. Nobody was home. Beautiful spring morning

and the person that finally answered the phone was a very tall

woman about 80 years old named Jean Graves. Jean came from old Atlanta money, very Southern,

and everybody was darling.