The Red Stick Roundup in Baton Rouge, LA

Couple of weeks ago, Tim came up to me and asked me

if I would be willing to host a speaker

this year at the convention, he said. You're from California and the speakers from California, you probably know him.

40 million people in the state of California, 4 million drunks. He's in Northern California. I got silver in Southern California and I didn't know him,

but I've had the pleasure of getting to know him the last couple of days and it's,

I think it's, you're gonna enjoy this evening. He's, it's turned out he's really a nice guy. I don't know what his pitch is really like, but he's really a nice guy. And, and he has some good stories and tells some good jokes at dinner. So that works for me. But with no further ado, I'd like to introduce James T from Auburn, CA.

James Alcoholic.

I wish you could see the view from up here.

You guys are beautiful.

Wow, we are not Saints.

I guess you got to go about 70 miles South and see the same.

I'm not from around here, you probably can tell that, but

anybody drink smart water here in the Baton Rouge?

I bought a bottle of it with me. Kind of helped my talk a little bit.

First time I ran across this stuff I couldn't get the lid off.

I'd have one. I guess you have to drink it first to get smart. I don't know, but I did. One of my sponsors get it off for me. Anybody have sponses?

All right, extra credit. Anybody have spotties with him here this weekend? Excellent, excellent.

If you want to stay sober, the book says. That's probably the single best thing that you can do for your sobriety is have some responses.

I was traveling last month or maybe as a month before that and I, I, I missed the flight that I was supposed to get to get to where I was going. And I called my host. I, I actually texted my house to ask him what I should do. I, I didn't know I wasn't going to be where I was supposed to be. And I was, I, I needed some guidance. And this guy, it was, it was an, A, a convention that I was going to. And this guy texted me back

read page 449 and go to a meeting.

Now they have some good. Hey there.

So I've been talking for a minute and I, I got two Nuggets I give you right off the top. If you want to stay sober, have some sponsees and if you have a problem, there's a spiritual solution. So if you doze off during the rest of my talk, you can take those two things with you.

I got to thinking about this smart water. I used to have a job a long, long time ago, one of the many careers I've had. I worked for an advertising agency in New York City. And I was thinking that it would be really a good idea if some admin came up with a way of labeling whiskey. And so when you go to the liquor store, you know what kind of whiskey you're going to get.

So let's say you want to have a you got a problem, you want to solve it. Go get a bottle of smart whiskey.

You go home and you drink it and and take a few notes and next morning you get up and you can't read them, but at least you have some smart whiskey to drink.

You know, I go to the liquor store and get a bottle and sometimes I get

Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde whiskey or I get some puking and going to jail whiskey

or I get this dial in whiskey.

You know, three in the morning. You call a bunch of people don't want to hear from you.

You ever get this stuff called traveling whiskey?

I thought it was a woman.

That's fifth step stuff. I've been getting ahead of myself.

I did not sleep with that man.

Yeah. The one I like the best, though, is something I call plucking whiskey. It's out of the it's not. One of the stories in the back of the book is that I I played the scenes over and over in my minds eye of the nursing and drink at the bar where I suddenly got plucked away and was put into some position of a power and prestige. I love that stuff.

So that covers my drinking.

I'm a puking, going to jail Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde traveling, dialing, plucking alcoholic who thinks I was smart when I drink

kind of covers it.

Another thing I used to like to do is think. In fact, I like thinking and drinking, thinking and drinking and drinking and drinking and thinking and thinking and drinking and thinking. Anybody do that?

I found out that there's no problem that I have. The thinking is going to help.

I learned that in a a I love it. Saying that Einstein has is. None of your current problems can be solved by the thinking that created them.

My problems were created by my thinking. I don't fix my problems when I thinking. I create my problems by my thinking. You ever see that 20 questions for whether you're alcoholic or not? You ever take those questions for your thinking? Just thinking causing your problems at home.

You have trouble sleeping because he was thinking.

You think your life would be better if you stop thinking?

A guy like me needs a sponsor.

You kind of tell that, you know, I can't. I can't figure this out by myself.

I got a sponsor, his name is Jack and he's my second sponsor. My first sponsor died when I had 18 years of sobriety and I didn't realize I didn't. I would not have done this if I thought that it was controversial. But my first sponsor was a woman name was Donna. One of the last things she told me before she died is she died from lung cancer. She said sobriety is no fun when you can't breathe.

So after Donna died, I got Jack as a sponsor.

I like it when people brag about how long their sponsors been sober.

My sponsors? He sponsored Moses one time,

but we have a saying in a you know, be nice to the newcomer and maybe your sponsor someday. And I was nice to Jack when he's new, and now he's my sponsor.

Abe Lincoln has the same. He says no matter how tall your grandpa was, you have to do your own growing.

And

Jack is a he teaches that an air traffic control school. And for a long time I was a teacher, until I retired a year or so ago at a place called the California Department of Corrections

Control and Corrections. Jack and I have issues.

One of the best reasons I I heard to have a sponsor was some guy outside the meeting when I asked him ask a newcomer, relatively new guy how long he'd been sober

or what his sobriety date was and he said which one.

And he says I haven't had any meth for about 3 years since I got out of prison. Haven't smoked any pot since I was in Mexico last year and I haven't had to drink for 90 days but I had a beer last night so I guess I have 89 days today. It's called newcomer math

I only I only have one sobriety date. It's the only one I've ever had. It's December the 6th, 1982 and.

Clapping for an alcoholic for quitting drinking is like clapping for a cowboy who has hemorrhoids. He quits riding his horse.

I should Brian based the last time I smoked marijuana. We got any marijuana smokers here?

No, I mean, do we have any ex marijuana smokers here? OK,

we don't smoke marijuana in a a,

at least the people that I hang out with. You know you're not sober if you're smoking marijuana in California, where I live.

But I was smoking marijuana because I had a problem with alcohol.

And

I got to the point where

I'm not sure that I wanted to quit drinking, but I wanted to quit having the consequences of drinking. I was tired of the consequences of my drinking, and I wanted to not have those consequences. And so I can somehow see the connection between the problems in my life and alcohol. And I made a decision to quit drinking, but I didn't know how to quit drinking. I hadn't found you. So the best thing I could come up with is I know I'll smoke marijuana

because my problem is alcohol. Or at least that's what I thought my problem was.

So I'm smoking out, I'm smoking marijuana, not addictively. Before I got out of bed in the morning, I had a nice little patch growing and I did that for a while. But my sister, during that time, she came to a A. We have a family problem with alcohol and she came to a A and she kept, when she saw me, which was where she encouraged me to come and check it out And what she said about it. And she knew me really well. I think is she said to me that I'd like the people,

the people would like me. Wow, she ever right? She didn't tell me about the steps or God or she didn't tell me that stuff because she knew that would have just scared me away. She told me that she told me about you

and I fell in love with you when I came here.

So

when I got here, I've seen a lot of people that do a lot of what I call weird things to help control and enjoy their drinking.

The book has a Latin phrase and they're ad infinitum. It's like we do amazing number of things

to basically try not to drink or try to drink normally or try to control it.

I sponsor a guy whose sobriety date is the last time he did nutmeg.

Got any Nutmeg users out there?

I've seen people,

well, I tried something called the Rebirthing one time. People tried Dianetics or S or Oprah or Chopra or

some people join the army to help them with the drinking or leave the army or get married or get divorced.

I'm not making this stuff up, but I have another sponsor who joined Amway to help him with his drinking.

It's crazy.

So I get to A and I started, I start meeting these characters. There's a lot of characters in a We got a guy named Boxcar Bill where I am, and there's a dumpster Don SWAT team, Ron Booger, John

P Ben Ed.

So how, how in the world are these people going to help me? What if, what what have I come? What have I stumbled into?

If you're, if you're new here, you know, welcome to AAS. Like, oh man, how did the Swift guy like me end up in a platelet? Like when I got here, I was like, how do I end up in a place like this? And but I could, I was able to listen. I could, I could hear what was being said. I didn't agree with a lot that was being said, but I could hear it. And I hope that if you have trouble hearing, you're not like my friend Mel,

who came in and out of a a he just couldn't. He couldn't hear what was going on. And one time he came out of a blackout. He was laying in the back of the in the back alley of this bar where he drank and there was a wino pissing in his ears

and he could hear just fine after that.

Takes what it takes.

So I get to AA and I find out

my problem is not really alcohol. If alcohol is my problem, all I have to do is quit drinking.

I knew there was something wrong with me. I knew. I knew somehow that I was damaged. There was something not right about me. I knew that. It's like I was playing with a short deck

and what I found out that there's a name for what's wrong with me. It's called alcoholism. I have alcoholism. I didn't want alcoholism. I didn't ask for it, but I have it. And if I don't treat it,

it's going to kill me.

And quitting drinking doesn't cure alcoholism.

When I got here

and and took the alcohol away, it's like

when you remove the alcohol from an alcoholic, you're just left with the ick, the alcoholic. So I had to, I had to find a way of treating that. And what happened for me is when I first come came to meetings, I introduced myself as an existentialist. I was an alcoholic when I got here. I ended a drink in over a year and I'm so I'm so thankful there was no sign in the room that says you had to be an alcoholic to be here. I would have had to have left because I wasn't alcoholic,

but I came to meetings and I listened.

End up catching alcoholism from you guys.

It's a contagious disease and this is where I caught it. So don't sit next to me because I'm going to try to give you a kiss. If you don't have it yet, I'm going to try to give you a kiss of it.

So

somebody said to me at one of the early meetings is OK, you're here, you have you have an allergy,

you're gonna have to come to meetings for the rest of your life. You have an allergy to alcohol.

And I thought about that. I thought, you know, my dad had an allergy to bananas. I never saw me to banana my whole life. He just told me stories about, not stories, but a story about a banana he ate when he was young. And he got such a terrible reaction. We never had another banana in his life. He did not go to BA Bananas Anonymous.

He didn't have to go to bananas. There's no such thing as Bananas Anonymous,

because Bananas didn't talk to him.

Alcohol talks to me.

It's not what alcohol did to me. Losing jobs, throwing up, having no money, going to jail, losing jobs, smashing cars. It's what it did for me. Alcohol does something for me that nothing else does. Nothing does, and it talks to me. Oh come on. It starts off as a love affair. Come on, sweetheart, we're going to have so much fun. I'd still be a virgin if it wasn't for alcohol. I loved alcohol when I first started

and the other people relate to that. OK.

And in the end it was getting the car bitch.

And and I got in the car.

I did what alcohol told me to do.

I need a lot more than just meetings

to be able to be free of that.

So I'm going to meetings for a while. One of these old timers and how they are, they say kid and they come poke in the chest. A kid. You work in the steps

I said. I don't read. I don't really like your 12 commandments.

You're reading the book. I don't really like that book. I don't even know any Mrs. Brown.

You got a God in your life? Not I don't believe in God.

You got a sponsor? No, I got it. I can handle it. I'm I'm OK. I got it.

Then he asked me to kick her. Well, how you doing?

So I'm not doing too good.

I'm not doing too good

and I got to thinking.

There I go thinking,

well, right, whether I had the skills, whether I was capable of of doing a A and I looked at my drinking and it's like, oh, I know how to follow a path.

What I had was a rut. I had a rut to the liquor store. I know how to do that.

I drank one day at a time.

I understand that I didn't. I can't get drunk today on yesterday's alcohol. I need to drink alcohol again today if I wanted to get drunk again. Sobriety is kind of like that. I never went into the liquor store, read the labels and walked out of the liquor stores that alcohol doesn't work. I drank it. You got to drink alcohol for it to work. So if you're here, I I certainly hope that you don't leave here and go back to the bar and tell the bartender that you were in a a day a doesn't work. You don't know whether it works or not if you haven't.

It's a program of action. So I have to I have to take the actions.

So I kind of got the the courage to do that as a result of you. You sure about you taking the actions?

So I'm digging around in this book and I'm thinking there must be some kind of references to marijuana because it seems like a it's a big problem for a lot of people in

in a a I'm looking and looking. I'm thinking there must be some kind of reference there someplace in the book. And one day I come across this thing. It's buried in the book. It's on page one. Here lies a Hampshire Grenadier who caught his death drinking small cold beer. A good soldiers never forgot whether he died by musket or by pot.

They don't mention the hard drugs till page 7.

So I'm an 80 about six months. I'm not doing anything except going to meetings and not drinking, not

not smoking pot, and I'm unraveling. You only can do that for so long. There's only a window of opportunity for a guy like me where I've got to do something where I'm going to drink again or blow my head off or something. And I just got right to that place where I had to do something,

and my sister told me about this guy named Howard, who's a member of a but he has a family, he's a counselor. And I want to see Howard.

And I told Howard the truth. I've never told anybody the truth before. My drinking was characterized by it was very secretive. I didn't want you to know what I was doing or get close to me. It was sleazy a lot of the times, and I moved around a lot. And so I never told anybody about me

and I told Howard about me. And I heard somebody say once the Alcoholics really should go to veterinarians. Is there used to guessing that? What's wrong with their patients?

But so we never tell them the truth.

So I told Howard the truth for an hour. It's not running on my face crying. And it was like AII just told him about myself. At the end of the hour, he got on a piece of paper and he wrote prescription to the top and he wrote get on your knees and pray. And he handed me this piece of paper and I handed him $50. It was like a $50 fifth step with no four step. And I don't know if it's odd or if it's gone, but I started to do that.

I started to say God. I didn't even believe in God,

said God, what do you want me to do and give me the power to do it. And tonight I say thank you for another day of sobriety.

Howard gave me a number of a woman who gave me another number of another woman, like this woman whose name was Don. And I called her and asked her to be my sponsor. I've never seen her before. I never met her. And we had some things in common. And she agreed that she would do that if I would work the steps, go to four meetings a week and get a journal and write in my journal every day and share my journal with her once a week. And I agreed to do that

about the same time I got a new car.

I'd my life was getting a little better, I'd save a little bit of money and I bought this sports car, which is the nicest car I'd ever had. And I had probably, I had an alcoholic truck

a little bit like Jason's a car a little bit, but door panel one color, different color, crack windshield springs coming through the sea, ball tires, you know, alcoholic truck and somebody else's tags on the back. And I'm not saying that's true.

And I bought this nice new car and I started going to a lot of meetings and I was actually, I was trolling. I hadn't had a date in a long time. I was,

I was incredibly lonely when I got here. I didn't even know how lonely I was. But the book describes my loneliness very well. I was, I was a Walking Dead person, just empty on the inside. And I needed to be with you for a long time before I can. I can tell how lonely I had been. But I started going through a lot of meetings because I would not have gone out with a woman who would get in my truck. So I hadn't had maybe a date for five years. I was a bachelor when I came to you,

so

I don't like anybody else is planning to date in a a but I'll say that the the the odds are very good, but the goods are very odd.

So I start meeting with my sponsor and I'm journaling and I'm journaling,

and there's little numbers on the steps for guys that went to college.

And I go back and look, look back over my life and it's really, really clear to me this that when I take a drink, I can't stop.

When I'm not drinking, I forget that I can't do that.

I remember one experiment that I had one of my better experiments to prove to myself that I wasn't alcoholic

was I didn't know what an alcoholic was. But I what I came up with is I know what I'll do. I'll not drink for 30 days because an alcoholic can't do that. So if I could not drink for 30 days, then I'm I'm free and 3rd I'm not alcoholic. So I do this. I don't take a drink for 30 days or close to that I think. And I meet a buddy I was tending bar at the time. I meet a buddy for lunch and have a glass of wine to celebrate not drinking for 30 days,

which makes sense and I was in jail at midnight that night.

When I take a drink, I can't stop.

But there's a second part to that, that first step. And I can see that because of my inability to see that ours powers over alcohol, I ended up making a mess out of my life. I'm not a good manager of my life and I have a lot of evidence to prove that I did a very poor job of that. So

I need help. I need, I need a new manager. And my life looks pretty good now. It's because I'm not the manager anymore. I found this power in a A and I let this power be my manager. And one of the things that I do to remind myself that I'm not the managers. I don't ask the question why? Why is a management question. I'm in footwork, I'm not in management and it frees me up a lot

to to not think that I'm in in management by asking that question.

Because for me to ask why is to ask for an argument with God. I don't want to argue with God

when I have a problem now, which I don't. I rarely have a problem, but when I do it's almost always because

I think things should be different than they are and I think that I should be the manager. If I was managing things, they wouldn't be the way they are when when I'm upset about something.

But what I realized is

when I fight reality, I lose, but only 100% of the time.

So I stay out of management as best as I can. A Step 2 for me. You know, we all have stories. I'm sure we all have stories of the crazy things we did when we were drinking. But the craziest thing I ever did, I did sober. I picked up another drink. For a guy like me to pick up a drink, it's crazy. I'm nuts. So I need to be restored to sanity.

That's Step 2.

During the I worked in the prison for 15 years. I just retired recently and

during I was a teacher and during the 15 years that I was there, as you can well imagine, I met a lot of inmates, convicts who had been in a A. Our prisons are full of people who've been to a A and I started this little informal survey asking my students,

asking the 1st if they've been in A and then asking them some more questions. I said, did you have a sponsor? Did you work the steps? Did you put some some clean time together? And probably over the course of the 15 years that I was there, I maybe met 25 guys who had done all those things. They've been in a A for multiple years and they had sponsors and they'd work the steps. Every one of them, every single one of them told me it was the best time of their life.

Well then I asked him, Well, what are you doing in prison?

What do they say?

They stopped going to meetings.

So I come to the meetings so that I don't go insane because if you drink again after you've been here a while, you have to go insane first. So the meetings keep me sane and plus going to the meetings helps me to see what happens to the people that don't go to the meetings. They go insane.

So I get to step three and I go to my sponsor and I said, OK,

this is as far as I can go. I don't believe in God. I'm done. I can't go any further. What am I going to do? And I said this, this a a is just full of contradictions. This doesn't make any sense at all, though. It's this doesn't make any sense at all. And she says, what are you talking about? I said, well, in the book I read something about the problem of the alcoholic is in his mind. I go to the meeting is a sign on the wall says think, think, think.

Somebody says the one of the

indispensables of recovery is honesty in someone else's. Fake it till you make it,

and if someone says you have to surrender to win, we'll tell that to your military friends. But you have to give it away to keep it. Talk to your bank manager about that.

Or We're not bad people trying to get good, we're sick people trying to get well. What do we have to do? A moral inventory,

taking the trip, not taking the trip, said oh, don't worry, these are only suggestions. And someone else says, well, there's 100 musts in the basic text.

So he said, don't make any major changes in the first year, but quit drinking. That sounds like a major change.

Don't make any major decisions the first year but turn your will and your life over the care of God.

Don't get into relationship the first year. You get a sponsor and tell them all your shit.

A relationship to me. My favorite one is half measures of illness. Nothing. You'll be amazed before you're halfway through.

So I've got to my sponsor and I'm telling her all this and she says, well,

what about your life? You got any contradictions in your life?

I get to thinking about a little bit. I just, I just graduated from UCLA and I was on this trip in Europe and I ran out of money fairly quickly. And I wired, a friend wired me $200.00, which would have been enough at that time to last a month or six weeks in Europe. And I got the money around noon and it was all gone that day. I woke up the next day and I didn't have any money.

And there's a line in the book that

a lot of ways were pretty normal people, except when it comes to alcohol. I thought, you know, that's probably true for me. I've never gone into a store and say, can I buy everybody a loaf of bread? But you know, I did that with alcohol

and that night I was in a mission where I was sprayed with this lice spray.

That's a contradiction in in my life to the way that I was living. So what I decided was this.

I decided to let a A change me instead of me trying to change a A. And that for me meant watching on a vigorous course of action. It wasn't very vigorous or off the bat. I probably stared at a blank piece of paper for a couple of months,

but I, but I started to do my four step and I, I didn't have a lot of resentments that I, that I was in touch with, but I, I had a lot of hate in my heart for my father. I hated him. It was a period of many, many years where I wouldn't talk to him, put his name at the top of a piece of paper and started, I started to write about the, the pain that I felt as a child growing up with an alcoholic father. And

I just, I just started sobbing and crying and, and I called my sister, I called him sick to work

and I talked to her and I just kept writing and sobbing and crying. Something happened that day, something about my willingness to start to, to get in touch with the feelings that I had and to see how spiritually sick he was. And I, I can't explain it, but that day I was free of that anger and hate that I had towards him. My fears lift. I had women on my fears list. I had God on my fears list. Both important relationships for men

and I didn't have good relationships with with either of those and

inventory was was a lot of my secrets were around things that I'd done in my past that I was shameful of.

When I went to do my fifth step, it was kind of a rainy November day. And as we were driving over to the place where we were going to do it as a place where I used to grow pot. And

my sponsor was saying something about seeing a lot of trash cans that were being kicked over by dogs or something. And she says I got to change my, my attitude because I've seen a lot of trash. And I did my footstep and I, I didn't have a lot of insights in it, but I was as thorough as I could be. And on the way back to her house, we saw a rainbow and touched me very deeply that I, my life had been, I ruined my life. I'd thrown it away and it was like a garbage can and I dumped this garbage can out.

I saw a rainbow. The book was in meeting last night of the best of Back to Basics and we're reading page 75 and there's a lot of promises when we do the 5th step. And those promises came true for me. These promises all through that book I got. I got excited about my sobriety that day because I was taking action. I was doing what you did because for so long I wanted to figure it out and I wanted to argue about it. I didn't want to do anything. Let's talk about it. No, no.

And I finally took the action, and when I did, I got some really wonderful results for me,

six and seven looks like, oh, this is easy. Just two little paragraphs in the book. Just Wham

that. But this, this new car and this trolling that I was doing, I was very successful at night. I ended up meeting a woman named Betty and we started dating and our idea of a date was going to a meeting. That's that's the best thing I can think of to do. And I'd be holding her hand to walking her back to her door at night. And I don't know whether to kiss her or say the Lord's Prayer.

But we got married and she sends her love to you tonight. She's not able to be here, but she has more sobriety than I do. But she's just a wonderful gift in my life. And,

and we just celebrated 28 years of marriage. And

my story is no relapse and no divorces. That's possible in a, A and and when I married Betty, Betty had two children,

girls, Angela, seven, and a boy, Sean, 13, and she had a sister who had some children. So on, on one day I get to be a father,

a husband and an uncle and I don't know how to do any of those things. And I'm, and I'm, I'm wanting, I want to be good at that. I, I, I truly wanted to learn how to do that. I didn't know how, I didn't know how to do relationships. And so I'm at six and seven and I'm starting to, I thought I was this great guy because I was by myself all the time. But when I get in relationships with people, I see that I have some defects of character that are, that are blocking me from being effective in these roles that I have. And I was able to,

what I think is my, it was my main character defect that drives a lot of my behavior. And I call it fault finding. I'm going to find fault with what you're doing and I'm going to push you out of my life. And I was doing that my whole life because when I push you out of my life, I'm not going to drink the way that I want to. And that doesn't work when you're a father and a husband and an uncle.

Just prior to getting sober, I was living on this property that I had, I was sitting in a bucket calling the composting and, and I, my idea was to put a, put a big barbed wire fence around it to keep all the teenagers away from my pot. And I was just going to be in the middle of this piece of property with a pot and cheap wine that I was drinking and and some vitamin C so that I could be healthy.

And

and I realized

later on that working in the prison system is the worst punishment we have in America is we put something, put somebody by themselves. It's called solitary confinement. I did that to myself in my disease. That's where my disease took me. Everybody was gone and it was just me.

And so I get married and I'm a stepdad and I don't know how to do that.

And nobody could do the dishes, right? It's like I have this gift or purse or whatever you call it as I know how to do everything. And I'm going to tell you I, I know the internationally accepted standard way of doing things. So nobody can do the dishes, right?

So in the interests of peace in the family, I decided to start doing the dishes myself. So and I like to garden, so my hands are always dirty. So I just stand at the sink. And I and I wanted to do them peacefully. I didn't want to do them with resentment or anger. So I just have to stand there sometimes for several minutes before I can just do the dishes. If you're just doing the dishes, very spiritual. If you're just doing the dishes

and what I started to do, and I learned this from you, I started to treat my stepchildren

as newcomers.

It started off with Angela. You're nothing. You're not the boss of me. You can't tell me what to do. And and then I started writing her notes about how happy I was to be her dad and what a special daughter she was, how much I loved her. And I started, I stopped finding fault with everything she was doing. It took a long time, but many, many years later, she asked me to walk her down the aisle when she got married. And at her wedding, her biological father was there to thank me for raising his daughter.

You taught me how to do that.

I'm a fall Finder. I don't know how to do that. I got directed checks for that wedding too

and I was happy to do that because I had a good job. You taught me how to do that to the suit up and show up be be accountable.

Sean, my son, 13, when I came into his life, he was already into his disease and I didn't know that at the time, but but his disease progressed very rapidly for him. And

when he was about five years sober, he he, you know, when I was about five years sober, he was 17, just short of my five year birthday. He borrowed my car and I called it my sobriety car because I love this car and it was a gift to me of being sober. So everybody knew my car is my sobriety car.

She thought he barred my sobriety car and he got drunk and he smashed it and almost killed his passenger. In fact, his passenger was in a coma for a week. And I wasn't very spiritual about this. I was very upset. And Sammy Alan, people came to our house, they do Allen house calls where I live. And one of the women said to me, I was complaining about what Sean had done.

He was in jail for juvenile hall

and I said he ruined my sobriety car. And she said to me, well, maybe it's not your sobriety car. Maybe it's his sobriety car. That was his last drink. He just celebrated 25 years of sobriety.

You got sober at 17,

Girl got sober in 16 in San Diego, and they've been married for a long time. Both have master's degree. They're doing fabulously well. The disease, the disease of alcoholism is progressive. The recovery is progressive. Also, parenting is progressive too. I look at my parents and I look at Betty's parents, and I think that we did a better job parenting than our parents did. And I look at our children. They do a better job parenting than we did the disease.

The recovery is progressive.

Step eight. I made a list that traveled around a lot. I'd maybe filled up three passports when I was drinking. I died.

Moved a lot. I was sober several years before I realized you can move it, and that you can move in the daytime.

There's a lot of people that I have not, I've been not able to locate. I'm more than willing to set the record straight if I can. I don't know who they are, where they are, but I I'm very willing to, to right the wrongs that I've done. But my immense, for the most part, I think that that touched me the most were certainly with my, my mother and father. I was a neat kid. I have. I have a lot of potential that I could have been a contender.

It's like alcohol I thought gave me wings, but then it took the sky away

and I was a big disappointment, especially to my mother. And she died. The years when I had five years sober, my mother died. Betty's sister was killed in a car accident and one of her children was paralyzed and Sean smashed my car. That was a very, that was a very busy year, five years of sobriety. But I was right in the middle of a then you surrounded me and you loved me and you just were there for me. And I just felt this sense of community and protection from being

right in the middle of a A,

but prior to my mom dying during those, those five years, I was able to be a good son. I was able to go see her. I was able to just, I can just be there for her. And that was a real gift. My father, I invited him to come and live with me at one point, and this is later on, he was in a bad situation and he came and moved into my house. And I was willing to, I had a lot of love in my heart for me. He could have stayed forever. I was willing to have him stay the rest of his life with me. He was there about 3 weeks. Something upset him and he says I'm out of here