The Big Easy Group's 2nd anniversary in New Orleans, LA

My name is Paul Mortensen. I'm alcoholic

and my sobriety date is May 5th of 2001

and as I like to say, that is due to the grace of a God that will never help me. Sponsorship that really should not be trusted in a simple program of action that is never going to work anyway.

Kind of a skeptic. I nice job on the steps and traditions. I think the best miss read of any stepper tradition I've ever heard was that someone got up and said that alcohol cuddling. Baffling. Powerful.

5 minutes later when they can start reading again. They finished off quite well. It was fun but wearing a coat and a tie. Because Casey said if I didn't he was going to have me thrown out of Alcoholics Anonymous. I just sit here. But I'm going to take that risk anyway. I so I'm alcoholic.

Really what that means is that when I take a drink of alcohol, I get thirsty for another drink of alcohol. Normal non alcoholic. Normal non alcoholic people don't seem to have that problem

and I'm not going to go into the scientific BS behind that and the acid, aldehyde condensation, all that junk because nobody really cares about that. Bottom line when it comes down to is when I take a drink, I get thirsty. And when I don't take a drink, I start thinking about taking a drink or thinking about not taking a drink. I get to thinking about whether or not other people are drinking safely and whether or not it's going to be OK for me to take a drink. And I spend all day long thinking about drinking, not drinking or trying to drink and, and, and somehow, someway managed to control and enjoy that experience. And

not very good at, I mean, I'm good at drinking, you know, I can hold my liquor at least three out of five days a week.

I only throw up when I drink too much, which is only two or three days a week. And, and I guess the thing about that for me is the first time, well, OK, let me back up a ways. First time I got loaded was when I was 15. Now I'm an alcoholic pothead and I'm not going to talk a whole lot about smoking weed, but I have smoked a truckload of the stuff. And the first time I got loaded, that was what it was. And it was the first time that my brain ever stopped making all that noise that it makes 'cause it's busy, man. There's a lot going on here. Imagine 12,000 Swiss watches with microphones

all working at the same time. And that's kind of the rattling noise in my head constantly thinking about, you know, what you're thinking about me as I'm thinking about what you're thinking about me. And if you think that what I'm thinking about me might be the same as what I think you're thinking about me. And you know, I'll God, it's just loud. And So what happens is when I get loaded, that noise pliots down. And now I got alcoholism in my family. There are there are drunks all through my family tree and all through my family history. And, and one of the things that I found is that I didn't want to be a drunk,

did not want to be an alcoholic. My mom's an alcoholic and I love my mom dearly. She's got more sobriety than I do now, so she can call time on me anytime she wants to. But she

back when I started getting loaded, my mom was still drinking and she was not doing well. And what, what ended up happening is I decided I was going to get loaded without drinking, you know, And so I initially started out as a pothead, but I drank, you know, here and there. But I found that what it really seemed to have a problem with is I do not like to be sober.

Once I'd gotten loaded a couple of times, it occurred to me that I don't know if there's a conscious thought, but I don't like being sober. I need to get loaded. I need to get something. And I got to catch some kind of a buzz. And So what happened is about 6 months after I started getting loaded, I wound up dropping out of high school. I wound up checking into a nut ward. They threw me out of the nut ward because they felt that they could not get me to be honest with them. Big Book talks about, you know, how these doctors that that try to help us seem to have a problem with that because we won't tell them the whole truth anyway and we won't do what the hell

to do. You know, we come in and we say I'm hurt and well, what are you hurting over? And I'll tell him a couple things I'm a terrible victim of and they'll give me some suggestions. I go home and don't take and decide the doctor doesn't know what the heck he's talking about anyway, and I'll go off my merry way and stay drunk. But anyway, so the psychologists wound up telling my parents that, you know, most people come in here wearing a suit of armor. We can find a chink in the suit of armor. We can work our way in and work with these people. And, and they told my parents, you know, Paul's got about nineteen sets of armor on and we can't help this guy

until he's going to be honest with us. They sent me off to a boys ranch from which I immediately began running away, hitting the streets and getting into all kinds of trouble until they threw me out, dropped out of high school, hit the streets. I lived on the streets of Spokane, WA for, you know, 2-3 years. The the details are not overly important, but I was a street kid. I have slept in doorways that weren't in my house. I have called Pizza Hut and ordered pizza and waited for a few hours till they threw out the trash and then took the pizzas out of the trash,

knocked on the back doors of churches and asked them to give me sandwiches. They had this place called the crosswalk on the corner of 1st and Jefferson and Spokane, which is kind of an outreach program for teenagers and the kids on the streets. And you can go in there and you can eat and in the winter time they'd let you crash there. I've slept on heat grates in Spokane and drive up parking garages.

This wasn't something that I planned on doing, but I got to tell you, I could have gone home at any time. I could have. It wasn't about that. It was just I, I wanted to do what I want to do the way I wanted to do it. And I didn't want anybody telling me what to do. And out here I can, well, I think I can do what I want to do.

So end result of that, I wound up getting in a whole bucket load of trouble and I had everybody from the police to my drug dealer

conformity and everybody was upset with me. And so I wound up heading out to Wisconsin to live with my mom. Moved out there and I'm out there with about, you know, foot two feet worth of hair and looking scruffy. Didn't shower more than once every month or so. Wear the same pair of socks. I was grubby all the time. My feet always stink. My shoes were rotten. I was a wreck. I got out there and my mom took one look at me, checked herself into treatment, sobered the hell up and has stayed sober ever since.

So for what that's worth,

she'd been drinking for about 20 years at that time and and I'd been only getting loaded for about four or five. So it was it was not going well. I was out there. I stayed with my mom until she had to leave and go to treatment. They put me in with my grandma and grandpa. I got an apartment and did not pay the rent in that apartment for 10 months. Apparently they don't like that. After about 10 months, they asked me to leave. It was some just ratty trashy apartment with mold on the walls is nasty. And I was living there rent free with, you know, a sink full of dishes with the flies forming around them because it's too much work for me to do the dishes. And I just sit around

doing nothing, reading comic books and everything else. They threw me out of there. I wound up staying with a couple other friends here and there. Got thrown out of there. Got thrown out of there. Pretty soon I'm in Madison, WI and I'm homeless again and I'm back on the streets again. I was like an old Aussie song. And I wound up going into this. I don't know, it's a mission or a homeless shelter. What the heck it was. But I went in there and slept there sometimes and didn't show up when I was supposed to show up and, and came back loaded and didn't get a job and they asked me to leave. I don't know where you got to be to get thrown out of

shelter, but that's apparently what happens to guys like me. So I hooked up with Doc and Bear and Kid and we pulled some of our state money and bought this $150.00 beat up GMC pickup truck that spit oil and gas and crap out from underneath it all the time and would not go over 55 miles an hour because it start doing this rock'n'roll shuffle and looked like it was going to fall apart. Pulled up to a dumpster, took 2 old easy chairs through in the back of this truck facing back. Me and Doc hopped in the back and Kid and Bear hopped in the front 'cause they had licenses. And we drove out to North Dakota to join the carnival for a new start.

Worked at the carnival for the summer. I had at one point had a tantrum or a snit or whatever you want to call it and was upset with Bear or Doc or somebody and I took my glasses and threw them at a wall, broke them because that was smart. So the next thing I had was these prescription sunglasses that weren't even my prescription. It was the only way I could see. And so here I'm working in carnival wearing sunglasses day and night, couldn't see a damn thing. And and this guy, Knockout Dave, one of the carnies that was known for knocking people out with one punch, came along one night and offered to beat the hell out of me for wearing sunglasses.

Thinking I was so cool, I took off the sunglasses and I don't know whether he saw the alcoholism in my eyes or what, but he left.

I was not well. I was not well. So we went through one town and I ran into this girl and and she spent a little time with me behind the tool truck the first day I met her. So I knew she was the one

we she she left home and joined the carnival to be with me. So a few months later when I left the carnival because they were offering to beat and rape her and kill me if I tried to stop him, we decided we were going to go back and stay with her parents who graciously took in this absolute

loser homeless bum. I didn't have a single bit of clothing without holes in it, you know? I mean, I, I was no vision for you, you know, And he took us in,

let me stay there for about a month. I got a job and she got me to get my GED and got another job and she pushed me into going to college. I enrolled in a tech school and got a degree in electronics. All this time I'm, I'm becoming an increasingly regular drug user. I was smoking a truckload of pot and I was drinking at any available opportunity.

Tried not to get too drunk, but it seemed like every time I drank, I drank too much. I'm a puker, so you know, at least half the time I drink too much and I wind up throwing up. I do not like doing that. However, I can't seem to stop. In fact, for the record, the first time I got drunk was when I was 15 or 16. I was on the run from that boys ranch and we had an eat in a couple of days. We'd stashed our stuff in some house that we'd broken into and me and this guy Mike met up with a buddy of his and we broke into his buddies or they broke into his buddy's basement of his dad's house and took this big old gallon jug

vodka. And we went over to somebody else's basement and we went down in the basement to have a party. Now, I hadn't really ever drank before. I had a couple of sips on my dad's Brandy when he wasn't looking, but I never actually like drank. And so they had me a 32 inch Slurpee cup. And they're like, you want to make your own drink or you want us to mix it for you? I got to be a tough guy. I can't let him know I'm an idiot. I got to act like I know what I'm doing. So I'm like, no, I'll make my own. So like, OK, so I filled this cup up almost all the way with vodka. And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You want like some orange juice with that? And I'm like, for what? And they're like, well, flavor. I'm like, all right, splash the orange juice in there. Mix it around like, you know,

kool-aid style. Took a drink.

So I did what children do, plug my nose and hammered that sucker. Drank it all down.

I didn't breathe for another minute or two after that. It was a bad experience. That damn near came up right away. And then they're all cheering me on, going, man, you really know how to drink. You know how to drink. You want another? I'm like, yeah, so I drank another one like that. And under 15 minutes I down probably 1/5 of vodka

on on an empty stomach. I hadn't eaten in two days. It was really a grievous error in judgment.

That wasn't because I was alcoholic, that was because I was stupid is what that was. I didn't know what I was doing. And 2030 minutes later when I'm unswallowing all of my booze and and orange juice, that's not my word. I picked that up from someone else, but it's a good word. I I was not thinking this was such a good idea. And for the next several hours I continued to throw that up and it stopped being orange juice and vodka and it started being just orange coloured Ouch. And pretty soon it was this black tarry paste I later found to be stomach tissue. I found it what had

as I had given myself alcohol poisoning to the level that it could have killed me, and I didn't know that. The next day I woke up, threw up all over the guy's house one more time, and he told me to leave. I called up the boys ranch and they said they're not going to come get me, but they could pick me up from the hospital. So I went to the hospital and checked in and they wound up pumping my stomach and feeding me charcoal and running fluids into my veins and all kinds of stuff and told me that I probably could have died if I hadn't made it to the hospital.

You'd think a guy like that would never ever drink again, right? You know, guess who's speaking at an A, A event tonight.

Jesus. So years go by, married to this girl. I'm running drugs because that's the only way that I can afford to have drugs because I have a family and I was trying to be a considerate, responsible adult. So I'm dealing drugs out of the closet

while they're in my family and I got a job and apparently that's illegal. I got pulled over one day and and they noticed that I had the stuff and the reason I don't consider myself an addict because given a good enough reason, I stopped. Given a good enough reason, I was, you know, an alcoholic. Given a good enough reason,

cannot stop or moderate, non Alcoholics can. They can stop or moderate and moderate means they don't have this phenomenon of craving that an alcoholic seems to have. Where when I get alcohol in my system, I get thirsty. You know, I was not able to stop or moderate with alcohol, but I was able to do that with the drugs. I just knocked it off. I did it, you know, for a couple of more months and just a little bit here and there. But I got to the point where, you know, doing that was no longer fun. Doing it was no longer a joyous experience doing it. I do it about, you know, smoked a couple of hits and suddenly I'm doing window patrol, realizing they know

and just stop being fun, so I quit. What I did is I turned to the solution for me, Mickey's Fine Malt Liquor brew, which is one of my favorite things in the planet. It tastes wonderful, although it's not nearly as cheap as Old Milwaukee's Worst.

Dear God, that stuff is rot. Got beer. So what I do is I would, I would pick up a 2 liter of Mickey's Fine Malt Liquor brew and I'd drink that in the night. And after a while I had two of them. And after a while, I had two of those and one of those little shots of Jose Cuervo, which is one of my favorite people in the whole planet.

After that, I'd get a little bottle of Jose Cuervo and a couple of those 40s. And then after that, I realized that it'd be a hell of a lot cheaper if I just bought a 12 pack of beer, which I did

and drank on a daily basis. After drinking 212 packs a day for a while, that occurred to me. I could save a dollar if instead of 212 packs, I bought a case, which I did, and I drank that. And I said I'll make it last all week. And two days later I'd have to buy another one. Pretty soon I needed a bottle of Jose Cuervo in the freezer as well. And I would go through 1/2, a fifth or a half a gallon of Jose Cuero, 1/5 or 1/2 gallon of Jose Cuervo every two days and a case of beer every two days. And every two days I'd have to run down, I'd have to buy a new bottle in a new case.

I didn't think it was a problem. I just

due to some other events that have absolutely nothing to do with

alcoholism or recovery, I'm not going to go into it, but my wife and I decided we were no longer fit for one another. And so we split up and I got my own place and I really, really took off. I could buy all the beer I wanted. I could drink whenever I wanted to, and then I could get on the Internet and tell people what I really thought.

Yeah, I met some girls, kind of like your group is named, you know, Big Easy.

I'm just trying to help.

I was. My judgment was not even questionable. My judgment was awful.

And you know, what wound up happening is I met this girl on the Internet, which is where you meet the good ones

and hooked up with her. And she,

she later saved my life. I'm not going to say anything bad about her, but she, she needed more help than anybody I knew was able to give to her. And she and I got together and within five months, it went from a dubious to absolutely awful. And during this time, I'm drinking all the time. I'm sneaking drinks on Saturdays before I go to work on Saturday. I don't drink at work unless I drink at work. I didn't drink at work during the regular days, but I would go home and I would, I would drink. I can go all day without a drink as long as I know I'm going to be able to drink when I get home. I can handle that. Just stay the hell out of my way or

light your face on fire. A little testy when I'm waiting for a drink. A little edgy.

And so five months into this, this girl and I are clearly suited for one another because we're both equally out of our minds. And I wound up getting in a fight with her. Something had happened similar to what had happened in my my marriage. And things had gone kind of sour. And we had a big fight about it. And then I came home one day and she was online meeting up with guys online and it was not good. And I kind of went off the deep end and we got into a big fight that Monday.

I had already made a decision that I was losing my mind. And I went to my supervisor at work and said, I, I need to talk to you. And he said, what's going on? And I said, well, I think about paranoid schizophrenic, depressive, bipolar, alcoholic. And he said, whoa, okay, well, here's some Flyers and stuff and maybe we can get you some help. So I had gone down to, you know, the local nut ward and a couple other counseling places and so forth who had all indicated that perhaps I definitely needed help.

Talked with those people, set up an appointment for the following Tuesday because they couldn't even take me in right away.

I think they needed to pad to sell a little better. And and what happened is on on Monday, I set up to check into these places. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I, I couldn't even go to work. I couldn't even go to work. I stayed home those days. Friday I decided I was going to go and go to work, went into work, came home and found that she had been online chatting with guys and it was a bad deal. And so we got into a big argument and I started unstalling the little chat program from the computer and escalated into a big fight and

she and I wound up wrestling with one another as she tried to shove past me.

I grabbed on to her. We fell down, I got up and I smacked her across her area and three times real hard and anger. I never hit a woman in my life, never played well. I slapped my ex-wife once when she was throwing dresser drawers at me, but I don't know if that wasn't a justified but I digress. Anyway, the the fight we got into, I struck her in anger and I swore I'd never ever do that in my life. See what happened is when I was four or five years old, my mom and my dad split up over my mom's alcoholism and she was staying with this guy Jim, who lived out in the woods. And Jim was a drunk and Jim was a very nasty drunk.

And this guy Jim, when I was about four or five years old, wound up when we were visiting mom. He wound up coming home drunk and he wound up slapping her around and punching her and kicking her and hitting her and almost breaking her leg and knocking her on the ground, stepping on her glasses and generally being a real douche. And I was sitting there four or five years old looking at his bar darts, thinking maybe if I threw one of those at him, he'd stop hitting my mommy. I'm really glad I didn't do that. I would not have gone well for me. But what happened is, is that day,

May 4th, the 2001, I wound up after she left the house,

I wound up throwing all of the stuff I could find in the house up against the door because she had a key. And I didn't want her to get back in till it occurred to me I wanted her to come back. So I had to move all the crap away from the door. And in the process, I had torn something of her, of her possession. And she came home and she saw that I had torn that. And she said, yeah. She said you're going to just wreck my stuff on. Is that how it's going to be? Just going to tear my stuff up? And she said maybe we should destroy your crystal chess board, your precious crystal chess board. How would you like that?

You're not in my state of mind. I was like, yeah, what a good idea. I had this crystal chess board that had been given to me for Christmas a few years ago. And, and the, the Jess board was real precious to me. I still had an original box, the Styrofoam with all the pieces in their little slots. And I took very good care of it. And I said, yeah, you know, that sounds like a really good idea. Let's do that. I might have got a hammer. And when I got the chess board and I threw it down on the ground and she tried to take the hammer from me, saying no, no, that I didn't mean it. And I said, whatever. I shoved her up onto the bed and I got down on my hands and knees and I went Wham, Wham, Wham, Wham on this thing for 5-10. I don't know, 15 minutes over and over and over until I couldn't move pieces, pieces of

Jordan crystal and stuff flying all over the place. By the time I moved out of there, there were still pieces. I was fine and laying around. And she's up there on the bed crying. And she says, I'm leaving. You're crazy. And I said, yeah, I think that's probably a good idea that you leave. She left in that night. I drank myself to sleep. Before I did that, I called up my mom and I talked with my mom, who was now sober and kind of told her what was going on in my life. And my mom said something to me that today I understand. Then I thought it was kind of strange. But what my mom says is, you know, I'm telling her I want to kill myself. I want to die. I can't live like this. And she says,

you know, why don't you just grab another beer and keep talking to me? I think because she knew that the only thing that was going to keep me from blowing my brains out, hanging myself, stabbing myself or somehow or other killing myself is it boozes the thing that kept me from killing myself for a long, long time. I got to say that, you know, an alcoholic of my type. One of the treatments for alcoholism is alcohol, says it in the big book. One of the treatments for alcoholism is alcohol to drink on till the bitter end following this endless procession of sots. You know, the other option is I'm going to need to accept some kind of spiritual help.

I'm gonna need like hell. You know, I think not. And my family is all very, very religious with a very,

what's the phrase? I don't want to diss their religion because they're great people and their religion is great people, but they're very articulate about Bible and scripture and all that jazz. And So what I did is as I was growing up, I learned how to win. I didn't learn how to help anybody. I just learned how to win arguments. That's why I learned how to do, which is really bad thing for a guy like me to have. So you know, I, I knew that you guys didn't have any answers because I can prove everything about what you said

wrong. I could find a loophole somewhere. I couldn't come to you guys for help

so anyway.

That next day she came home and she said, you know, I sat there and I woke up in the morning. I picked up a beer and just kind of sipped at a beer. I didn't really get drunk. I just kind of sipped at a beer, a couple of beers that morning from about, you know, 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning until about 11:00. She came home and we sat and talked for a little bit and she said, I'm going to a, a dance tonight with my friend Keith. He's got six months. You can go if you want. I thought, oh Christ, A, A and a dance because I ain't going to go dance for crying out loud,

she says. Yeah, but

I was thinking, no way you're going to a dance with another guy without me. I don't think so. I'll go, she says. Well, then you're going to have to stop drinking. 11:00, May 5th of 2001. I put down my last beer at about 11:00 in the morning. I went with her to this dance. It wasn't a dance. It was a frigging roundup. There's 300 of these meatheads and all running around in suits and ties and smiling and asking me questions I can't answer. Like, how are you?

I don't know. You know, the first thing that happens is this guy, Kane, comes sliding across the room with his hand out and says, hi, I'm Kane. Are you new?

In my mind, I'm like, no, I'm not new. I'm not new. I'm not new here. I mean, I'm not going to be common here or anything. I'm not involved in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've got myself a place in the treatment center and I'm going to be able to go into the treatment because they're probably going to be able to help me a little bit better than you lay people can. And I'm not in a position to be in here trying to talk about whether I'm new or not. I just, I just want to get back together with this girl that I had this big fight with the night before. I didn't have time to say all that crap, so I just said yes. And what he did is he went over to this guy, Jeff

V, who everybody at the time called him chief because he sponsored a lot of people. He's one of the two guys who put together the Northern Plans group, him and Chad B, and

they kind of stole formats from Montana, stole formats from South Dakota, stole formats from Minneapolis and California and kind of passed them together into something they wanted. They wanted this roundup environment every single week. And they wanted people to come in and be able to catch this buzz every week and get the energy that that we get in an exciting meeting. And so he brings me over to Jeff and he says, Jeff, this is Paul. He's brand new. Can he sit by you? And Jeff says, no, I forgot his story in my life, right?

He says no. He says, I'm going to do a sobriety countdown. Why don't you have him sit way up there? And they set me up like the third row in the front. And I'm thinking,

everybody can see me. This sucks. I knew they knew who I was, too, because they're all in suits and ties and dresses with, you know, perfume or Cologne. And they're smiling. I hate that I show up in jeans and leather. You know, my hair is due for a haircut. I'm a little bit spiky. And it's like, I walk in the room and I know it's really what happened. But it seemed to me that every single head in the room all turned and they're like a new guy.

Jesus, if I could only be invisible. Now, at this point, Jeff gets up to do the sobriety countdown on 3rd row and he says, all right, we're going to do a sobriety countdown and we're going to start at 30 years and count backwards. And whoever has the least amount of sobriety in the room gets a free copy of the big book. And I thought, shit,

this is not good because she knows how long I've been sober. This Keith guy knows how long I've been sober. Kane clearly knows how long I've been sober because he just met me in this Jeff guy that's up there doing the thing. Was just told that I'm new

OK. And he starts counting down. He gets down to a week and what's happening is people are standing up and clapping and cheering. They're all rowdy and I'm thinking Oh no, they're going to get down to one day and going to realize I don't even have a whole day of sobriety. I was drinking this morning and they're going throw me out because they don't want people in a, they can't stop drinking.

A,

I didn't know what this was all about. I didn't understand. I didn't even know what was wrong with me. I thought I did. I thought I knew what was wrong, but I did not know. I had no idea what I was up against. And So what happened is he starts doing his countdown and he counts down, you know, gets down to a week, looks around the room, looks right at me. Anybody with six days looks around the room, looks right at me. I'm thinking, Oh no, he gets down to two days. Anybody in the room with two days, I still haven't stood up yet. And he got to the end and he didn't say who has one day

what saved my life. He didn't say, is there anybody in the room who's still drinking? Which saved my life because I probably would have just walked out in shame. What he said.

And I will never forget this. He looked around the room and he said, is there anybody here in their first day of sobriety?

I stood at the turning point and I made a decision and I stood up. And what happened is instead of throwing me out of Alcoholics Anonymous, 300 people came out of their seat and they cheered and they collapsed and they patted me on the back and they pushed me up there to get the stupid book. I got the book and sat down in a state of shock and listened to the speaker get up. There is a lady named Nancy M from Minneapolis.

Nancy got up. She stared her story. She shared her story

and it wasn't some kind of a big book meeting. She wasn't out there sermonizing about how to do a, a right and you're all doing it wrong. She wasn't up there given some kind of beautiful, super duper a, a talk. She got up there and she talked about her story. She got up there and talked about what she felt like and she put words to things I could not describe. And she described behaviors and attitudes and actions that I was doing. And

then she said she's an alcoholic. And it occurred to me that these things that I was experiencing, these things that were going on with me weren't because I was a bad person. They weren't because I was evil. They weren't because I was possessed by some demon. They weren't because I was insane,

because I'm alcoholic and I didn't understand that before. And it really changed the way that I look at the world.

So what happened is after the meeting, I'm walking around in a state of dumb shock because for the first time in my life, these people are all there. You know, she's telling these awful stories that I wouldn't dare tell anyone for fear that it'd be back to the room with no doorknob. And what happens is all these people are laughing and clapping and thinking this is the greatest time in life. And I'm just stunned. It occurred to me, maybe I'm not alone. Maybe I'm not the only person who's going through this, and maybe I'm not the only one who has to deal with this. And So what happened is after the meeting, I wondered up to this guy, Kane. And

my eyes are like rolling, like slot machine wheels, right? And he's like, so how's it going? I'm like, good, good. I said, I think I'm gonna try this. I said, but everybody's talking about getting a sponsor. I don't know who to get for a sponsor. You know, who's in town? There's people from out of town. Who do I talk to for a sponsor? What do I do? He said, I'll sponsor you. He says I'll be your sponsor. And I thought, hell, that's not what I meant.

And he did. This book I have, incidentally, is the book I got at that sobriety count on. I've carried his book with me all over the place. I also actually read it. And not only do I just read it and talk to other people about it, I actually do this stuff in it because a guy like me doesn't stay sober just sitting in meetings. I'm an alcoholic who needs to experience recovery, not just meetings. I if you think about it, if you got a bad tooth, I know most drunks don't ever have problems with their teeth because we take such good care of ourselves. But if you think about it, if you got bad tooth

or a couple of bad teeth and you decide you've reached the point where it hurts so much, you're finally willing to do something about it. And you make a decision. You're going to go to the dentist office. And you go to the dentist office and you sit down in the in the waiting room and you kind of look around. There's a couple other people in the waiting room. You're like, So what do you do here? The guy says, you just keep coming here. OK. My teeth hurt, though. Well, maybe you should get yourself a commitment. Straighten out the magazines. Straighten out the magazines. My teeth still hurt. Well, maybe you need more than one commitment. Why don't you take out the garbage?

OK, the garbage is out. My magazines are straightened. My teeth are killing me. What do I need to do? I'll put on a coat and a tie. OK, so I put on a coat and a tie. Magazines are straight. The garbage is there. I'm still in terrible pain, My teeth hurt. What do I do? The guy says, well, maybe you need to go get some other people and bring them here. Be a service, be useful. OK, so I got a bunch of guys. We're all sitting in a room. The magazines are straight. I'm wearing a coat and a tie. The garbage has been taken out and I'm dying. I take a drink of cold water and my teeth light up like the 4th of July,

and I think I'm going to die. And I stand up and I'm like, God, I don't know what to do here, man, but I'm dying. What do I do? And he grins at me with the 4 1/2 black teeth that he still has and says, been working for me for 25 years. Staggering backwards. I bump into the counter and the lady behind the counter says, can I help you? I'm like, yeah, my teeth are killing me. I don't know what to do, but sitting here ain't doing nothing about it. She says, well, you know, it's possible that the dentist might be able to help with you. Or is that something that you're interested in? Yeah, absolutely. Because I can't do nothing about myself,

you know, and her teeth are shiny and clean and they look good. She says he takes care of my teeth, maybe he could do good with yours. I make a decision, you know, OK, I'm willing to do this. So I come to believe that dentist can help me. And I make a decision to do something about it. Off to the dentist chair I go and we sitting in a dentist chair and we do a little inventory work. And I tell them it hurts here and here and here and here. He says, OK. And he goes in there with little picks, you know, where he's like poking around and he finds a couple that I didn't even know about, which is why you do a fist step with a sponsor because they know more about you than you do. And he says, OK, shows you the X-rays and says, this is

hurts, and This is why it hurts. And we're going to do some serious work here. Are you willing to trade this for whatever is behind door #2 And that, I think, is a six and seven step right there. You make a decision, yeah, I want to make this right. What do I got to do? And then they go in with the drill. And you start with the novocaine, which is a really good idea. And when we come into Alcoholics Anonymous, we have a similar experience. We got that time that sometimes is condescendingly referred to as a pink cloud. I don't think it's a pink cloud at all. I think it's a period of grace. And I don't think that the grace of God should be understated. And that period of grace is a period

where a guy like me is given the opportunity to take some actions to get well. And that's kind of like that novocaine. And if you wait until the novocaine wears off to do that dental work, you're going to really regret it. Do it now, you know. And So what happens? He goes in and he drills and he picks and he scratches and puts in fillings and killings your teeth up. And then he says, from here on out, now you're going to have to brush and floss and take care of yourself and not drink all that damn sugar pop. And you're going to have to do better with your teeth. In addition, why don't you go out on the Internet and look up a little bit about how to take care of your own teeth and grow in your understanding and effectiveness and learn a little bit

how to take care of yourself. And then he says, and on your way out, why don't you tell those jackasses in the waiting room that they can come back here and get well if they want to, you know, because that for me is what it's going to take. Yeah, the waiting room is a good place, but I think meetings are a waiting room where we meet people that can give us a solution on what's wrong with me. Now I'm an alcoholic and I'm an arrogant little son of a bitch. And what happens is guy like me gets a hold of an answer in a solution like that. And I jump up on my soapbox and begin evangelizing and soapboxing and generally condescending. I talked down from my spiritual immoral hilltop to people with way more time than

and let them know that they're doing Alcoholics or Anonymous wrong and I become a general nuisance and annoy the hell out of the people around me. Nobody likes that and I wonder why nobody wants to hang out with me. In about four and a half five years of sober, I'm engaged to this girl and I'm letting her know how she's doing a a wrong and she's not doing it good enough. She should tighten up her work on the steps and I'm letting her know all the various ways that she moved out as well she should. And I found myself alienated and isolated from other members of Alcoholics Anonymous and wonder why I hurt so bad. I call up my friend Steve, and I'm talking with Steve W