Sacramento Monthly Speaker meeting in Sacramento, CA

Face I saw when I walked into the rooms. Please give a warm welcome to James T from Auburn.

Thank you,

James Alcoholic.

I'm in good company here tonight. Happy birthday to everybody.

Thank you Ingrid for inviting me. It's a real important day in my life today. Today's the day I don't drink.

When I was drinking, I used to always think that I could quit drinking, but it was always tomorrow that I was going to quit drinking. It was never today I could quit, maybe on a bet on my birthday or maybe on Saturday or maybe at Christmas time, but to quit today, I couldn't do that. What I learned in a A is that I just kind of switch those things around. I may drink tomorrow, but today is the day I don't drink.

The general shift in my perception. So today I'm going to do whatever I need to do to not drink and I think that I'm going to

be OK today just standing up in front of all you.

My sobriety date is December the 6th, 1982. It's the last time I smoked pot.

I was smoking pot because I had a problem with alcohol.

Oh, you relate to that, huh?

It I got to a place in my life where I just didn't want to drink anymore. But I didn't know how to not drink because I hadn't found you yet. So best idea I could come up with is I know what I'll do. I'll smoke pot and I won't drink because my problem is alcohol. I had clearly identified my problem as alcohol

and I happened to be a gardener and I was growing some nice organic pot. And so I quit drinking

and

I did that for quite a while. And during this time that I was not drinking,

my sister came to AAA. We have a family disease. And every time I was going to see her, I would take a bunch of Visine and, and a bunch of Listerine. And I'd tell her how good I was doing because I wasn't drinking. And she would tell me how good she was doing because she was an A A. And she finally, she kept inviting me to come. And all she ever said about it was that I would like the people and the people would like me.

Boy, would she ever write. She nailed me.

I was so lonely when I found you. The book talks a lot about the alcoholic loneliness and identified with it completely. I didn't have to ask anybody what incomprehensible demoralization was. I was just like a Walking Dead man when I found you.

So I come to AA and I'm not alcoholic. I'm not even drinking.

If I had to describe my drinking, I would say I would certainly not say I was alcoholic because I wasn't. I could take a lie detector test and I wasn't an alcoholic. I was a heavy drinker with a lot of problems when I was drinking.

So I, I come to a A and

I, I actually, I introduced myself as an existentialist,

which I was, and I sit around the meetings and I listen. I was able to listen. I could hear what you were saying. I didn't agree with you. I didn't really believe you, but I I could hear what you were saying

and I started to identify with your stories and I started to realize very slowly that that I drank like you drank. And it took me several months, but finally I raised my hand one day and said I'm alcoholic. I got a round of applause.

I'm kind of a slow study. So what happened to me is I end up catching this damn disease from you guys.

So if you're here tonight, you're not alcoholic. Don't sit next to me because it's it's contagious and I'd love to give you a case of it.

So

I thought, you know, I wonder if the book mentions anything about marijuana. And I thought it must be in there someplace because my understanding is if you're smoking pot, anybody, you're smoking pot tonight. It's not sober. With the people that I hang out with, we don't do anything. We don't do any mind altering chemicals. But out of curiosity, I wanted to just kind of I wanted to find out if the book ever talked about that. So I'm looking through the book and I'm looking through the book and I can never find anything about it. And then one day

I find something buried on page one.

Here lies the Hampshire Grenadier who caught his death drinking small cold beer. A good soldier has never forgot whether he died by musket or by pot.

They don't talk about hard drugs till page 7.

I sponsor a guy named Steve in Auburn whose sobriety date is the last time he did Nutmeg.

His name is Nutmeg Steve. When you do that kind of thing, you get a name in a A

some and you know, I'm meeting all these people like boxcar Bill and SWAT team Ron and too tall Steve and machine gun Tony and a lot of the guns involved in these things and a 30 day Bob and

and what I kind of heard is like there's good news and there's bad news here. The good news is that it works and the bad news is this is it. So here we are on a Saturday night

and we get to not drink because we're willing to do this work.

I'm here in a a about I don't have the timelines exactly right, but I was in I was going to meetings regularly, not drinking and obviously not smoking pot. And but I didn't have a sponsor. I didn't I have a God. I'd I'd given up on him a long time ago. I didn't think the book is very well written and I and I didn't I had I was doing nothing. I wasn't doing the steps. I was just not using and drinking

and going to meetings. We only can do that for so long and and

you unravel eventually. And so I'm about, I think it's around six months and

I got to do something. It's like blow my brains out, get drunk or work the steps. And at this point in my life, I went to my sister and I talked to her and I just told her a little bit about, you know, how crazy I was getting if she couldn't tell already. And she said she knew somebody in Sacramento that I could go see man named Howard. A lot of people

no Howard and have talked about him tonight. And I went to see Howard and I'd been this psychiatrist before, and I'd been to shrinks before and counselors. And I just lied to them, paid the money and left. And nothing ever changed. And I got to Howard and I sat in his office for an hour and I told him the truth about me.

I kind of snot cried for an hour, you know, chunks right on my face. Oh, and I and I shared all these secrets that I had my my drinking career and my perception, my drinking career was it was I was very sleazy. I did a lot of sleazy things with a lot of sleazy people. And I was AI was I was the sleazy person in a lot of that. And I looked at my life like a garbage can And I had a lot of just I was very secretive about it and I didn't I had a perception of what I wanted you to believe. I was like, and then I had another

persona that I had. The book talks about that quite a bit too. The Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I wear a suit in the daytime and then go drinking these places where your feet stick on the floor. And so I I had and I was afraid. This is a real fear that I had. If I shared who I was with you, you'd ask me to leave. That's how little I felt about myself. And I told Howard the truth

and at the end of the hour, he got on a piece of paper, so the yellow legal pad, and he wrote prescription to the top.

He's not a doctor. He just wrote prescription to the top. And and he wrote get on your knees and pray. And he handed me this and I handed him $50. He charged 125 just I think more recently before he died. But it was a $50 fifth step. What it was I had, but I didn't have four steps. It wasn't really a good fifth step

and I don't know why I did this, but I started to get on my knees and pray.

I didn't even believe in God. I knew it wasn't going to work, but I was at a point in my life where I just somehow I, I got some willingness to try something, I guess. And I, Howard had given me a number of a woman named Anna who gave me another number of another woman named Donna. And I called Donna and asked her to be my sponsor. I've never met her before. And she agreed to do that. If I'd go to four meetings a week, I'd write in a journal and see her once a week and I'd

steps. I agreed to do that. Also about the same time I bought a new car.

Prior to that, I had an alcoholic truck.

I don't know if there's any out in the parking lot tonight. You know what they look like? They're like the one of the door panels is a different color. The tires are bald. Some of these tags are on the back that aren't yours. Windshield's cracked. The springs are popping up through the upholstery.

And I bought a new sports car and it was the nicest car that I ever have and I never had a car that nice. And I started going to a lot of meetings. I was kind of trolling for a date. I hadn't had a date in about 5 years. Because if, if I could have found a woman who would have gotten in this truck with me, I wouldn't have wanted to go out with her.

It was, it was bad. So that was a lot of the loneliness too. I was, I was a 40 year old bachelor and I, I, I had no relationships with really anybody at that point. And so

I'm going to a lot of meetings, mostly to show my car off with the hope of maybe getting a date with somebody. And I'm starting to see Donna and Journal and I'm praying every day for the will of God in my life and the power to carry it out.

And I'm starting to feel better

and is one of my early spiritual awakenings where I was doing something that I didn't believe in. I didn't agree with it and I knew it wouldn't work, but I was feeling better.

And I kind of like equated to like going to the gym. If you go to the gym and you work up with the weights, it doesn't matter what you think about it. You can have any opinion you want about going to the gym, but if you take the actions, you get the results. And I was taking these actions and I was getting the results.

So never ask me about what I think about something because my opinion of it doesn't really matter. It's that I was willing to take the actions. So I'm starting to see my sponsor and I'm, I'm seeing now that there's little numbers in front of the steps. So I have to go back to the beginning, to one and do them in order because I've done this $50 fifth step and that's about all I've done.

So I look back over my drinking and I and I,

I could see very clearly that when I took a drink, I couldn't predict what was going to happen other than I was going to want another drink. And when I wasn't drinking, I was thinking about drinking. That's all alcoholism is.

I thought I was like somehow it was a moral issue or something, but it's just that I have an allergic reaction to alcohol

and I had one example stuck out in my mind. Particularly is one of the times just prior to quitting drinking, I was a bartender, which seemed like a good job for a person like me.

And I decided to quit drinking for 30 days so I could prove that I didn't have a problem because people who can't quit have a problem. And I didn't want to have a problem, so I was going to quit to prove it to myself. I was OK. So I quit drinking for 30 days and I and I did, I might have been smoking pot, I'm not sure, but I I didn't drink for 30 days. At the end of 30 days, I decided to have a glass of wine to celebrate not drinking.

You understand that I had a glass of wine

at the pepper mill on sunrise at noon and I was in jail at midnight

when I take a drink.

It went so well, that glass of wine went so well, I decided to have another glass of wine. And so it went.

So I was, I was able to understand that I was powerless over alcohol in my and then that's, that's part one. That's actually step one, part A. And then there's step, step one, Part B, that my life is unmanageable now. I thought my life was still manageable because I had a job. I had an alcoholic truck and a bad job and that meant my life was manageable. What I've come to realize,

it's taken me a while to do this, but I understand it down to my gut now

that my life isn't that. My life is that I'm not the manager

and I don't ask the question why. Why is a management question?

When I want to ask why about something, I ask instead. What can I do about it?

Because I'm a footwork guy. I'm not in management, I'm in footwork.

And I had a chance to, to walk my talk about that recently because I just retired from work a few months ago. I didn't really want to, but I did. And I decided I was going to join the Peace Corps because I like adventure. And I thought it'd be, I'd like, I'd like to be in a service. And so I talked my wife into it and we're going to join the Peace Corps. And we got as far into the process as we were going to go to Africa in August.

And

I did some blood work and it turned out that they didn't want me for medical reasons.

And I was really OK with it because I'm not in management. It's like I walk, I knocked on a knock on doors and I go through the ones that open and that door didn't open. And I realized shortly after that I don't have to go to Africa to be of service. There's plenty of things to do in Auburn and I

and I got 2 new spots ease within a week of that.

So I'm not going to Africa.

Step two, I thought, well, I'm not crazy. I find a little loophole in Step 2. I'm always looking for I'm a loophole kind of guy. And it says when I first read it, I thought that you had to believe in God to take the second step because at that point in my life, I still didn't really believe in God. And it's it, but it says came to believe that a power greater than our self disorders or standard. But you don't have to believe in the power, just that the power would restore you if it if it was, if you were insane.

It's a study philosophy in college. So I mean, I'm always trying to, you know, think my way into a better living. And but what I realized when I, when I took step to is that I did a lot of crazy things drinking. And we all have stories of what we did when we were drinking. There's we all have lots of stories. Some are funny, some are tragic,

but the most insane thing that I ever did, I did when I was sober. I picked up another drink.

I would have to go crazy first to ring again. I've been restored to sanity so I'd have to 1st go nuts before I'd pick up another drink.

So that got me through Step 2. Step three. I'm still still struggling with this God thing.

You know, I, I just had a lot and, and you, you said, you know, it's underlined on the steps God as you understand it. Well, I have trouble believing you when you told me that that I could do that because I had this idea that God was just this mean old man and he's going to poke your eye out and turn you to salt and and you can't do anything about it.

But you kept telling me it's God as I understand it. And so when I was taking Step 3, the word that I focused on the was the word decision. And what I did is I decided to work the rest of the steps

and and then what has happened for me as a result of doing that, I end up having this power in my life that's working for me. So I got a relationship with the power as a result of making the decision to work the program. But at the time I thought I kept saying this stuff is too confusing.

You know, it says in the literature someplace we have to we have to resign ourselves from the debating society. But I wanted to argue about things. I didn't want to do anything. I wanted to argue it. And you you hear things in a like what person will say let go the other person say hang in there. Will you hang in there? Or do you let go? And then you then they say

you have to surrender to win. What in the world does that mean? Or you have to give it away to keep it? Now that doesn't make any sense at all. Don't make any major decisions in the first year. Decide to turn your will and your life over the care of God.

That sounds like a major decision.

Don't don't get any relationships the first year but get a sponsor and tell them everything

that sounds like a relationship

or someone to say

think think think. And I like that one a lot. Where's the chapter about think think thick?

Wow. My my two favorite hobbies were thinking and drinking. Think, think, think, drink, drink, drink, drink, drink, think, drink.

The chapters called into action. It's not called into thinking.

You ever seen the smart water? I got one of my sponsors gave me the smart water the other day. I couldn't get it open.

You have to.

You have to drink it to get smart, I guess.

The one I like the best is half measures. Avail us nothing. Turn the page a couple pages. You'll be amazed before you're halfway through.

There's another one-on-one page, one page it says there is a power. There is one power. May you find him now. Oh, that power's God. May you find him now. Turn the page. God could and would have sought. We have to find him. We have to look for him. This is the kind of stuff that I want to think about. So I go to my sponsor and say I'm confused.

She says good. That means maybe you don't have all the answers. Maybe you're, maybe this is showing you some open mindedness.

So I got open minded and I had some willingness because I was talking to her about it and then the honesty came later.

So those are the essentials of recovery, honesty, open mindedness and willingness.

So I get to my four step and I'm doing this journaling. So I'm learning how to do the 10th step and I look at this blank piece of paper and I'm trying to do this four step and I can barely remember being in high school. I have a what's called purposeful forgetting. I don't want to remember a lot of stuff. And so I thought, how am I going to do this? I can't remember anything. And but as I was doing this journaling, I started to,

I go to my sponsor with this journal and I was amazed at the things that I was writing down there because I write it down without thinking about sharing it. And I found out

I was so out of touch with, with me. I had no idea that I, I thought I was just a really nice guy who had a little bit of a wee drinking problem. And when you don't have relationships with people in your life, you don't have any reality checks. And I'm out by myself all the time. And I, I, I, I really didn't know me at all. And this journaling process started to let me know about myself.

And

I put my I had. I hated my father.

He was what I think was the designated problem in our family,

and I hated alcohol as a kid. I remember working in a grocery store in high school and I'd shake the beer up so that when people would open it, it would blow up in their face. And I thought I was doing my part. But that was before I had a drink.

But I hated alcohol and I hated my father. And so I put his name on a piece of paper on my four step and I started to write about

how I was victimized by him, how mean he was to me and how how much hurt I had. And I, I just started to feel this and started, I started to cry and these tears just washed over me and I couldn't even write anymore. And I ended up calling him to work sick that day. And I called my sister and I was sobbing on the phone with her. And, and I just pretty much spent the whole day just kind of crying and sobbing and, and, and feeling all this,

this hurt over this lost childhood or whatever it was. And I stopped hating him that day. And it's like it was when I was willing to, to try to put my part on things. This I saw the thing in the book talks about, you know, we treat him like sick. We wouldn't treat sick people that way. So we treat him like he's sick. And, and, and he was, and I just washed away when I did that.

God was on my fears list. I still had problems with God at that point. Women was on my fears list. I was, I heard a guy in a meeting say he was afraid of women out loud in front of a crowd of people. Whoa. I didn't realize that I'd still be a virgin if it wasn't for alcohol.

Gave me courage

so

I didn't have a lot I didn't have a lot of resentments other than really my father particularly, but I didn't didn't have a lot more. I finally got my four step done and I went to do my fifth step and it was kind of a rainy November night afternoon rather. And on the way I, I went out to we did my fifth step out of the place. I lived out in Lincoln. I had some property out there and my sponsor was coming on the way out there that you seen a lot of trash strewn around the on the

street. And she said she needed to change her attitude because she realized that when she focused on something, you know, that's what she's going to see. And I did my fifth step and it was like dumping the garbage can. And on the way back from that, we saw a rainbow. And it was like the book talks about some promises when you do the 5th step. And those promises came, came true for me. The drink thing seemed to go away and I felt like I was, I was really, I felt like I really belonged in a a

I was, I was doing the deal. I just like, it's like paying my dues somehow to be with you. I was willing to do what you did. And

it talks about walking through this arch and there's, it's I had those feelings when I did that six and seven. I, I did those the, the, that night. And I thought, wow, this is, I'm really moving along now. And there's a like a little paragraph or two about 6:00 and 7:00. It's very misleading

that that seems like it's. Well, that's easy. Yeah, OK, Well, it's not it's it's like a lifetime. And

when I was doing this trolling with this car, this sports car that I had, which I call my sobriety car, I had a teddy bear in the back and a box of Kleenex. And

I met, I met Betty sitting over along the wall

and I started dating Betty

and we go on a date and a date for us was going to a meeting

scared still OK. And that was, you know, I hold hands and I don't know if I should kiss her or say the Lord's Prayer afterwards. I wasn't too sure what but

we dated for a while and we decided to get married.

So I have an A marriage and we just celebrated 25 years of marriage not that long ago. So

she's the love of my life,

my best teacher too.

I got a little package in the deal. Betty had two children. She had a 7 year old girl and a 13 year old boy. So when I married Betty, I got a family. So I'm a husband and I'm a dad and she had a sister who had some kids. So I'm a uncle and I'm all these things that I've never been before.

And I got to work septic and seven, you know, a lot. I had all these great teachers

and I have this, I've been blessed with this skill to know how to do things. And I call it the internationally accepted standards. There's internationally accepted standards, ways to do things. And I know what those are. And it's amazing how many people don't know what they are. I don't do them the way that I think that they ought to do them.

And what I learned from from doing a lot of inventory work is I was able to put a name on what I think is my biggest character defect. And what I call it is fault finding. I'm going to find something that you're doing is wrong. I'm going to find a lot of things that you're doing wrong, and I'm going to push you out of my life. I've done that all my life.

That's how I ended up as long as I was my best thinking before I came to you,

as I had a little piece of property where I'm growing pot and

I wanted to. Is that for me?

My best thinking was to build a barbed wire fence around this property that I had to keep the teenagers in the neighborhood out of my pot,

and I was going to just be in the middle of this little chunk of land. I was shitting in a bucket calling the composting. I didn't have any. I didn't have any plumbing where I was

and I'm going to get AI. Got a case of Brewers yeast and a case of vitamin C and a bunch of wine. And I'm just going to live my life inside this compound

loaded. And later on in in many years of sobriety, end up going to work for the state of California and the prison system as a teacher, a landscaping teacher, pot grower, landscaping teacher. And God has a sense of humor. And

I realized that the worst punishment we have in America is we put somebody by themselves. That's the worst thing we can do to anybody in America. We put them alone. And I did that to myself and my disease.

So and, and a lot of that had to do with my character defect of finding fault with you so I could push you away so I could be by myself and then I could be with my bottle. And that doesn't work well as a stepdad

or husband or an uncle.

And I had to Start learning how to have these relationships with these people. And what I started to do is I, I remembered how you treated me when I came as a newcomer, that I, I felt this sense of love. And it was a love that you you showered on me that I had no defense against.

There's no defense against the love that you feel here. And so I started treating my stepchildren like newcomers and started thinking of my wife as a newcomer. I tried everybody, people on the highway. I thought, if everybody's a newcomer, how would I treat them? Well, I treat them with love and respect. And I wouldn't criticize them if you didn't criticize me when I got here.

So I started doing that. And one of the places where I learned a lot of these lessons was doing the dishes. Because I got so tired of everybody not doing them the way that I thought they should be doing them and me criticizing them, I decided to do them myself. So I'd stand at the sink

and I wanted to do them peacefully too. I did not want to do them full of resentment, anger. So I'd stand at the sink until I could get peaceful to do the dishes, just do the dishes. And I read someplace later on there's over 60 ways to do the dishes. I thought there was only my way to do the dishes.

And Angela, my daughter, she had a Dalmatian, which is like a dog from hell.

They have no brains whatsoever

and I could see myself as I was coming home. I get madder and madder and madder

until I drove into the driveway and I was like fuming. And I hadn't got out of the truck yet because I knew there was going to be dog shit. I'd have to step over or step through or to get into the house. And a couple times I turned back around, went back to my sponsor's house. Just step over it. OK, I'll step over it.

And when I started doing with her is I started leaving her little notes about how much I loved her and how happy I was to be her dad.

And I stopped criticizing her completely. Varun was messy. I just closed the door.

Many, many years later, she came to me and wanted me to walk her down the aisle.

How do you get from there to there?

And I got to, at the wedding, her natural father came up to me and thanked me for raising her daughter.

I got to write the checks for that too, because I had a good job and I wanted to do that because I raised her. I was her dad. And I was proud to be able to do that. I'll talk about the boy in a minute.

Step 8 seemed like it was easy, just the list wasn't a long list really. For me,

the people I hurt the most were my mom and dad.

I was 37 years old when I said, hi, mom, I'm home. I hadn't seen her for, you know, 10 years was not a winning streak. Again,

I got to be a son for her and see her. She wasn't the most fun person to be with, but I got to show up at her place and, and take her places and do things and be a son for the last few years of her life. She died of cancer when I had about five years of sobriety. My dad, I, he was married to my mom for like 20 years and he had another 20 year marriage and he was not on a winning streak. And, and I invited him to come and live with us. He, he was living in Arizona. He moved all his stuff. He came up to Lincoln. He moved in with us now

willing for him to live the rest of his life with us. And I had a lot of love in my heart for him. And about 30 days later he got mad at something and said I'm out of here. And off he went. And he died a very lonely man. But you taught me how to be a good son and how to how to make amends to him by trying to make it right by doing the right thing in sobriety.

But the amends that there where they touched me the deepest were a couple of financial amends and

one was a $5 a man and one was a $10 amend. Doesn't have to be a lot of money.

The $10 a mint. I was at a restaurant after the noon meeting in Auburn one day and I got $10 too much and change. And my opinion has always been if you can't count, it's not my job to tell you how to count. So I just took it and put it in my pocket and we're probably on step 9 at the time. I don't know. And I go to the restaurant a couple weeks later and the woman says she's selling the restaurant

and I'm thinking, oh, if I'm going to give the money back, I've got to give it back today.

And I said, can I talk to you for a minute? And she's sure. And I said, I was here a couple weeks ago and I got too much money and I wanted to give it back to you. She's Are you sure? I said I wouldn't be, I would not be giving you this money if I wasn't sure. And I handed her the $10 and I started to cry.

Wow, that's the best $10 high I ever had. And I just felt like I was getting right with the world. And it gave me a lot of courage to pay the IRS back.

So I owed some other money. But that, that, that $10 one just really helped get me going on the path. The $5 one,

I mentioned my sobriety car. Well, it was several years after marrying Betty. Sean was 17 at the time. He got drunk. He was in his disease and borrowed my car and he smashed it and almost killed his passenger. And he was his passenger was in a coma for a week. And we got a call like one in the morning, 1:30 in the morning and Sean was in the hospital

and we went to the hospital. He, he peed in the back of the cop car. He was a mess. And I was mad. I was, I wasn't feeling very spiritual that day because he had, he had smashed my sobriety car

and I was upset. And the next day we had a house call from Al Anon. They do house calls. I didn't know that. And one of the women from Al Anon said to me, maybe it's his sobriety car. That was when he had his last drink and he just celebrated. He'll be celebrating 23 years of sobriety this year. Yeah. He got sober 17 and he has a wonderful life. He met a girl in a he got sober at 16 and they've been married a long time and they have master's degrees and their lives. Fabulous.

So if you're young here today, you can get sober young and stay sober young. It's possible.

And Sean went down to school in San Diego and he called me up one day and told me he'd been stealing money from me. And I had AI was a waiter when I got sober and I had a jar. I had a pottery jar full of money. All my change. I threw in there, a lot of money in there. And I looked in the jar and it was all nickels. He taken all the quarters out and all the Dimes out and even smoking pot with it or drinking or whatever and he wanted to pay me back.

He asked me if he could send me 5 bucks,

think wow he's got it.

We talk a lot of nay about how it works, that's the steps and why it works. The traditions and then when it works is step 9.

And when he started sending that $5, I thought he's got ahold of this thing and I wanted him to kind of get a sense of the spiritual power of that. So I started sending him 100 bucks every time he sent me 5 and the five started coming fast.

You're not

Step 10 is one of the steps that's been probably the most instrumental in my sobriety because I've I've really, I've internalized this concept that that if you're the problem, there's no solution for me. I'm, I'm the problem. It's me and my attitudes. And when I could take an inventory of that and I can see that I can do something about that. It's not the Lutheran's fault. It's not Obama's fault. It's not Bush's fault. It's not it's it's me

I need to concentrate not what's wrong with the world, what's wrong with me and my attitudes

and the the 10 step it talks about. If after watch out for selfishness, dishonesty, fear and resentment. Well, all of those things that mean fear is something that I don't not getting my way in the future. I don't think and dishonesty is I'm not getting my way now and resentment. I didn't get my way yesterday. It's all selfish. It's all about me, me, me. And when I can,

when I can identify that I can, I can quiet that disturbance inside of me and I can live in a peaceful place.

I have not looked driving down the freeway to see how many people are in the carpool lane for a long time. But I mean, that's the concern of mine, you know, is there two people in every car?

It's like, I think the most misquoted line in the literature is what it was like, what happened and what it's like now. That's not what it says is what we were like, what happened, what we're like now. If you go out there on the corner, there's a stoplight out there and it goes green, yellow, red, green, yellow, red, green, yellow, red. Does it all day and all night every day and it goes, that's all it ever does. Green, yellow, red, green, yellow, red. If I pull up into it and it's red, that's 'cause I got a story about it

and if I don't like it's red, I'm fighting reality. And if I'm fighting reality, I lose, but only 100% of the time.

I always lose when I fight reality,

So what I try to learn to do is embrace reality. I've heard a couple of people talk about red lights and one guy says when he gets to a red light, he thanks God for his sobriety. So instead of thinking of red lights negative, it's a it's a way to make it positive. Guys that have these court cards, you can look at that as a gift certificate.

You can look at it as a get well card.

I came here as a result of DUI and it's been a get well a card for me. Somebody else I know, he closes his eyes for a moment and gets in touch with his higher power. He says somebody will always let you know when it's green.

Yeah. Step 11

I've come to find this power in my life. That's that works for me. I read something I liked a lot. It said rather than saying sought through prayer and meditation is sought by paying attention. When I pay attention, when I'm right here, right now with you, that's where God is. And when I can pay attention, no matter where I am, I can be where the power is. And so I, I make an effort to do that.

I do a lot of gardening. And when you're on your knees pulling weeds and stuff, you're really in the present moment. And when I was drinking, I was always about two drinks more. I wanted to be so like one more bar and I'd meet Miss Wright or whatever. And when I was working, I was thinking about being at home. When I was at home, I was thinking about being at working. I was never where I was. And I've learned in sobriety to be here now. This is a very good place to be.

That's where God is.

Step 12.

I, I, I love the carrying the message and I it says carry the message. It doesn't say cram the message,

just carry the message. One of the things that I've done, one of a little passion I have is, is sharing speaker CDs with people working in a prison for 15 years. There's a lot of guys in prison that, that want to be sober, that, that they want to have a better life, but there's not a lot of people there to give them a lot of hope

And, and sharing speaker CD's with people is an awesome way to share the message of recovery. So I tried to do that a lot, practicing the principles and all my affairs. I, I'm pretty good at that. I think I, I work hard at it. I admit my faults and I've woken up. I've woken up as a result of during this work and a couple things I think that that have that are important to me in this waking up process or I see.