The Cary Young People's group in Cary, NC

Russell, I hope you did your job.

I'm Sherry. I'm Sherry. Ian did

March 16th, 1991.

January 19th, 2013

My brother wrote his hardly home to the big meeting last weekend. Monty Buki, this is for you. I'm glad you were there when I got there.

From today's Daily Reflection,

a approved literature, I believe January 26. Rigorous honesty. Who wishes to be rigorously honest and tolerant? Who wants to confess his faults to another and make restitution for harm done? Who cares anything about a higher power, let alone meditation and prayer? Who wants to sacrifice time and energy and trying to carry a message to the next sufferer? No, the average alcoholic, self-centered in the extreme, doesn't care for this prospect

unless he has to do these things in order to stay alive himself.

Well,

this ought to be fun,

somebody said. Damn, you sponsor half the people that are here.

I sponsor half the people that ain't here too, ain't they? Right.

My name is Chuck. I'm an alcoholic. And Leo, that's as good as being a hand to anything else as far as I'm concerned. So if you're happy being whatever else you are besides an alcoholic, hang in there. It might not get worse. I have had the privilege of being an Alcoholics Anonymous in a lot of different places at different times over the last

21 plus years. Homes where Mama is. Mama's here in Cary.

She's here tonight. Kerry, thank you so much. I got to mention her now so she won't be pissed off later

because I'm liable to start talking about me because it's one of my favorite subjects and I might forget talk about her again.

Homes also where Mama is my Mama. My mama's in El A that's lower Alabama for those of you that are geographically impaired. I'm here to tell you that I've been sober ever since I learned how I learned how in rooms like this with folks like y'all. The most important thing you taught me is I've still got a lot to learn, which is why I'm still coming back here since I have my last drink. I pray to God.

Drug or astrological reading. July 27th, 1991

and I'm extremely grateful for the men and women that have been in my life and crossed my paths. From that day until now. I'm fairly well convinced that everyone's been exactly where I needed them to be, exactly when I needed them to be there. In order for me to be here tonight,

I am expected to say something inappropriate, so I go ahead and get it out of the way.

I I was thinking about an alcoholic that was on his way to be with us

back in 1989 before the Hank Williams Junior and Lynyrd Skynyrd concert.

And I did say before the concert,

some of you in here will understand. And a police officer found him wandering around in a parking lot. And he just started with those security alarms on those cars and back in. They were really wild. They made a lot of noise. Anybody remembers? And he was bumping into, he was bumping into the cars and he was walking around the parking lot and he had his key up near and was waving around. And the policeman came up to him and he said, what is wrong with you, Sir? And what are you doing?

He said. My, my car is missing. I can't find my car. My car is missing.

Well when did you last see it? It was attached to this,

Sir, I think you need to come out from behind that car and come on over here and let's see what we can do to help you find your car.

So that alcoholic on his way to join us in 1989 before the Hank Williams Junior and Lynyrd Skynyrd concert, stepped out from behind that car and his pants were unzipped and something was hanging out.

And the police officer said, my God, Sir, you're exposed. And he looked down. He said, it's worse than I thought. I've lost my wife too.

All right, good. We're gonna have fun. This is to carry young people's group of Alcoholics Anonymous, where clearly you don't have to be young to be here.

I'm so glad for that because they've let me come in here and be a part of this and

it's been a real joy since Kerry and I moved here. Kerry came up here five years ago this month and it's been an absolute joy and a privilege to be a part of what's going on in this group. It's been a a real God thing to watch. A lot of y'all come in here brand new and grow up and begin to help other people and see your lives change

and see you be amazed before you're halfway through and see a great many of them have the same thing happen to them and happen to them.

And I know that it is only through God's grace that I've been given that opportunity. And I know that it's because God's been in this room. And I believe it's because that this message,

as is described in the 12 step, is what's begun to be spoken in this room more than anything else. It wasn't always that way. I know I got here five years ago and it read a little bit, a little bit out of the book and turn the light off and just share about some of the craziest nonsense I've ever heard in my life. And they seem to like it like that. So, you know, I, I just come and watch. And then I started sponsoring some guys and

they said they didn't come over here because all the crazy stuff that went on, they didn't feel real comfortable with that.

So what are you going to do to change it?

You're going to keep complaining about it, staying home, playing video games, watching Carolina basketball.

Are you going to come be a part of it and do something different?

So

I guess what I'm really supposed to tell you is what I used to be like, not what this group used to be like

I used to be like, was a mess. I was. I was born into a healthy, non alcoholic family. My mother and father, God fearing people. My folks were born and raised in the mountains of western North Carolina over near Waynesville. They come from large families. They were

Bible belt, Bible believing in church going folks. They were raised right,

I guess, that they live through the Depression and somehow had everything that they needed, if not everything that they wanted.

And there was a lot of love and what went on over there, and they brought that into the home that they built from my sisters and I. Something good was happening in that house because both my younger sisters became doctors.

I myself have seen a lot of doctors.

I have played a little doctor.

I was a much better pharmacist than I was a doctor,

but that in time eventually failed.

I know that

my granny and my Mama had had plans for me, and growing up to be an alcoholic was not part of their plan, but I seem to be bound and determined from my earliest memory to do exactly what I wanted to do. I was reading a story. There's a book that's called 1000 Years of Sobriety, and it's got 20 stories with 5020 stories of members with more than 50 years of sobriety that are currently actively involved in Alcoholics Anonymous right now.

We're blessed to have some of those people in our area right here. Three of them have their stories in that book. And I know for a fact that all three of them are very active in the program, Alcoholics Anonymous.

I still see them at meetings, and they do a great deal of work, not only for their groups and for the area, but for Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole. What an inspiring thing. And one of these men was sharing in his story that he had got an opportunity to spend time with his father right before his father passed away. And this man had been sober 30 years. And, and he wondered exactly when, Daddy, do you think I became an alcoholic? And he didn't expect his father to have an answer. And he went to the closet and pulled down a little shoe box and he got out his report cards

and he pointed to the year he was in the 7th grade. And he said it started right here

and he could see what happened.

And that's pretty much what happened to me. I was a good kid. I was raised to be a good kid. I, I tried to do everything that I was supposed to do. I was in the Boy Scouts. I went to church every time the door swung open. I was in the choir, I was in the church boys groups, the the, the ambassadors. I went to camp. I was at the Yi, did things I was at the Red Cross doing. I was a lifesaver, a junior lifesaver. I mean, I was really

everything that I believe that my parents wanted me to be. My mom addressed me like she wanted me to look like I was supposed to look. And in the late 60s, that was a foreign thing to some people around me. But I was looking different, feeling different and acting different and believing I was different. From a very early age,

even in my own home I felt that way. But I do know that at a point in my life, around 15 years old, I took my first drink

and something happened to me that night. And from that night when I drank more than everybody else, I sudden did a lot of things that I don't remember. I got into a whole lot of trouble. I heard an awful lot of people and I got really, really sick

till July the 26th of 1991 when I drank way more than everybody else and I said and did a lot of things that I don't remember. And I heard a whole lot of people and I got into a lot of trouble and I got really, really sick.

Not much changed except it got worse.

So I can tell you some of that

but most of y'all know that.

How many Duis does it take? I remember saying to my sponsor, that man that shared tonight, he said he only had one DUI and I've had five.

And my sponsor said how many DUI's does it take to be an alcoholic?

I've since met people who actually got here without getting any.

Y'all are different and special. I gotta tell you lucky, that's what you are and you know it.

How many times did I promised that I was never going to do it, only to do it again?

How many promises did I make that I was going to do? Certain things that I said I was going to do,

that I really meant I was going to do, but I never did? How many people did I hurt? How many great relationships did I ruin? How many opportunities that anyone would have been grateful to have had, Even one that I take and just drink all over, all through and throw it away.

I toured some of the finest colleges in the United States. Never went to class. Well, if I did, it was an accident. I did pay a Lebanese boy to go to class for me once. I think that's how I made a bee in chemistry at Auburn. No easy, no easy feat. That's strange. When you look and you got, you know, like you got a semester that's got 0.00 and the next semester you got like a a what would it be a point O 6

'cause you made AB in chemistry

at the hardest engineering school? Well, I won't say that I'm sorry. Second hardest engineering school.

So, you know, I kept having difficulty with life because of the choices I was making. Only I just thought it was because of something else and it was really the something else was somebody else, if only they would do what I wanted them to do. And usually it was attached to somebody'd pocketbook.

I would listen to my mother. She would come and she would sit and she would just. Oh God,

and I just stare at that purse.

I'll put up with as much as I have to put up with as long as she writes another check.

They came. She quit writing checks, they came. She quit taking calls. Day came where I was no longer her son.

They came where she came out of retirement as a registered nurse and took a job in a brand new treatment center

so she could try to find out a little more about what was wrong with her son.

And the very first patient to come through there was one of them. Little boys had been in her house. And she looked at that chart and all she had to do is change her name and she knew what was wrong with her son. I think Al Anon helped her from that point on, at least what she was exposed to was she worked in that treatment center and she learned how to let go of me. My father learned that a long time ago.

You know, as long as I was willing to do what he asked me to do, he was willing to be supportive of me no matter what else I was doing. But when I made the decision that I didn't want to do those things, that he and I had agreed I was on my own, he really could have cared less. At least that's what I thought. So I drank a lot over them not doing what I thought they should have done for me. I drank a lot over the fact that my daddy was an engineer and moved me all over the country, and I was always a new kid everywhere. I went all over again.

I got to go. I'd live somewhere for a year. Here we go. I gotta go. I'm to be a new guy again. Special and different. Move from Alabama. Move from Alabama to South Carolina. Don't talk like they do up there. Don't like the same football team. Don't dress like they do. Don't act like they do. Don't nobody know who you are?

What's wrong with you? Oh, so now I got to learn how to act like I'm from here and then from here and from here and from here. What I didn't know was that later in my life, that was all going to come in handy.

When I was in that bar, being who you wanted me to be,

I could talk and sound like I was from just about anywhere and we could talk about just about anything. And I knew someone somewhere that knew something about someplace you had been. Today I have that same experience, but it's because of being sober over 21 years and the rooms, Alcoholics Anonymous and getting to know a whole lot of y'all and going to a lot of meetings all over this country and meeting a lot of wonderful people and having lived all over the country sober and recognizing that we're all different.

We are all different

and I believe we are all special,

but we're all the same. Just like snowflakes. Ain't no two of us quite exactly alike,

but underneath we all made-up the same way. At least if you say your name and you're an alcoholic,

that much I know about you. If you and a lot of other things that go along with that, I don't know. Maybe,

maybe, maybe not. I don't know. But if when you take a drink you're unable to control the amount you drink or stop entirely when you want to, then you're an alcoholic like I am.

I became the type of alcoholic that found the best place for someone like me to be was employed making money, easy money, where I had access to all of my hobbies and could do whatever it is that I wanted to do. So why go to school when you can be a bartender?

And so I work my way through a variety of jobs until I ended up where I thought I was supposed to be, down in LA at the floor. Alabama behind the bar where half of the bars in the state of Alabama and half of the bars in the state of Florida. So it's drinking time all the time, 'cause in Alabama we don't drink on Sunday. Well, we don't sell it on Sunday. We drink on Sunday, but we don't sell it on Sunday,

but we sell it in Florida on Sunday,

and you buy it in Florida and take it to Alabama and drink it if you want to. So if you're in a bar that sells it on one side, takes it to the other side, back and forth, back and forth. And it's an amazing kind of a place. There was some drunk guys got together one night and they were out there throwing mullet at each other and somehow another, they invented the intrastate mullet toss. And today, I swear, it's an art festival. It's the annual mullet toss at the floor of Bama and Gulf Shores, AL, which they now call Perdido Key because it sounds better.

It's still Gulf Shores, and it's where Mama's at and it's where my heart is. And with Mama Carrie from Carrie.

So I drank too much and I screwed up my life, and I wrecked a lot of cars and I went to jail, and I ruined a lot of relationships and I burned up a lot of opportunities. And I probably could have been a good bartender and became a bar manager and made some good money. But I would have learned that there were other ways to make money besides bartending. And bartending became a side job

and I started doing those other things that we like to do. But I covered that good because I ran around musicians. That was good because they made great customers

and they were a lot of fun and we got to do things and you got to be special and different hanging out with those guys. So I became a guy that people could kind of go to and get to fix whatever it was you needed. And I'm not proud of that. In fact, I there's a lot of things I'm going to tell you that I'm not proud of, but I'm not ashamed of the man that I am today.

And there's a lot of things I did that I got real dirty doing,

I mean, really dirty doing. And in time, I was able to clean a lot of that up. And time I was able to let go a lot of that, but only as a result of doing what I've learned to do in these rooms. And because there were people here like you that showed me how to do that in your life. So, you know, there was nothing really left for me to do but run away from home, get married and run away from home seemed like a good idea at the time. And this is the way it was. I got a job, I got a little house, I got a wife, I got a, we had a couple of

because that was going to fix it. And it did. In some ways it absolutely did. And I love my children and I got a feeling one and or both of them may be working their way here. They show signs of possibly having the potential. As I say, I think one of them is likes to puff the magic dragon,

but he wouldn't drink Papa

and the other one, well, she's trying to figure out how to pay for the interlock device that they're making her put on her car. So, you know,

and I ain't helping her.

I learned from my daddy and Mama.

So, you know, I

I was the kind of husband that would the wife would call me because I was prone not to come home. And she would say you are coming home tonight. Oh, yeah. I'm getting ready to leave. We're going to close up here at 6:00. I'm gonna leave on the way. Tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna stop and I'm gonna grab some pizza. I'm gonna go down here and I'm gonna CJ and I'm gonna pick up some pizza on the way home. OK. For you and the kids. All right. I'll be there shortly.

And when 11:00 got there and I came stumbling in on a weeknight

and she's crying and she's telling me that she had had to tell the kids that something had happened and that she didn't know why I kept doing this.

Then the kids wake up and then they're crying and then she starts getting mad because they're up and crying and the dogs are up and they're wondering what's going on and everybody's up, everybody's crying. And I was having a good time and feeling good till I came home.

I get madder than hell and put them all to bed.

And I tell them, bug God, I'll be back. I'm gonna go get some pizza.

So I'll go down the road and I go to the pizza place and I get my buddy. He makes some pizza, but he sells beer so I might as well stay there with him and help some drinks. A few beers and an hour and a half later, me and that cold pizza go back home. I tell them all to get up and it's time to eat pizza

1:00 in the morning.

We live next door to a preacher,

a Baptist preacher,

and his with his daughter was a babysitter for my children. They went to the church school that he had. She would have to come and get them 'cause frequently I had problems getting up and getting them to school where they were supposed to be. That was my job. And the little girl would come take him to school and he was always on to come pray over me and my family and talk to me about what was going on. And particularly when I had talked to him one night in a Jack Daniels moment about my

well, it's true. And and about the

passionate experience I had shared with some other folks when I was in high school. This big event that occurred in my life scared me to death. Spiritual experience.

I thought you had to be in here to have those, see, when I was new, But I've begun to recall that I must have been having quite a few of them long before I got here. I'd have never got here

and I've had quite a few since I've got here, but I know that this man really loved and cared about my family. And it was the kind of thing that 11 morning I woke up and it had to have been a Sunday morning because of Saturday night was always a bad night for me. It was always a bad night for me. And I guess I'd probably been home just a couple hours and, and I heard the strange music outside and we lived on this little lake and there was like this strange music and it's like, what is going on? This music and and it's singing and I get up and I

outside and I built a little beach on the back of my house and there's the preacher and there's the flock. An unbeknownst to me, it's Easter morning and he's baptizing people.

So I grabbed cannon tennis balls, open the back door and set my Labradors for a swim.

How about that?

You know who came to see me when I was in treatment?

Preacher. And he prayed for me. And he held my hand and he cautioned me not to let Alcoholics Anonymous brainwash me.

Now if there was ever anyone that knew my brain needed washing, it was him.

He later went on to be one of the few little country Baptist preachers that brought a meeting Alcoholics Anonymous into his church down in red level Florida tiny place. He loves a A and what a A did for his neighbor and

and I. I'll be forever grateful to him and his family for what they did for mine. But the morning I came home, where no one knew where I'd been

again, my wife had had enough and she had loaded up the youngins and was all packed up and the only thing she could do was ask me where I'd been over and over and over, screaming, crying, hysterical, and she kept asking me where I'd been.

I didn't have an answer because the only reason I came home was get to check, get a check.

And she went in the bedroom with my son, who was only eight or nine months at the time and he was crying. Now he when he met old, he was three or four months at the time crying. My daughter was not was just a couple of years old and she's crying. So my wife and the boy go in the bedroom and they're crying. And I looked in the refrigerator and there was one bear left in there, one beer, one beer. And I had the checkbook and I was getting ready to go and I got that beer and my daughter came in there and she asked me where I've been. She kept asking me over and over where I've been. She

pull that bear out of my hand and hit the floor spilled everywhere and I didn't hit her but she was the only thing I thought that was good in my life. And I talked to her the way no daddy should ever talk to a 2 year old girl.

And she ran to her room started crying and

and I could hear in there crying and singing and I went to see what was going on and she's holding a little stuffed Angel the girl next door giving her and she was crying and singing that Jesus loves me Yes he do. And Jesus loves my Papa too. And

I remembered something I'd hurt as a child,

and I knew I was hearing something was absolute truth in my life, in my life.

And I fell on my knees and hugged my daughter and I knew how sick I was. And I promised her that I was going to get help.

I've not had a drink since then.

Been a lot of times I thought about having one. I had been a few times. I actually thought it might be a good idea.

I've been a couple of times. I thought about having something else.

You know, I I went to treatment. There was a guy working with me that was an Alcoholics Anonymous. I hated him. Used to drink with him. Didn't like him much when we were drinking and liking me less when he got sober. And he would come to me and talk about AA and he's always watching me. You know, we, we got a spot for you. Wait all on these days? You going to be up to the clubhouse? Oh yeah,

and I knew about Alcoholics Anonymous was based on what I saw in him. And I got to tell you, at the time I looked at AAA and I thought, Oh yeah, they accept assholes.

And now here I am, living proof that indeed they do.

Oh, Randy, he bird dog me for a good time. And he was there on him hungover mornings when I was getting in just barely late to punch that clock and to put that check in there to cover that money I'd stolen the night before for that stuff I like to go do in that place where the police don't like to go. Oh yeah, I better tell you about that too.

I got to where I wasn't welcome in most of the bars in my little town in Ocala, FL.

They say that Garth Brooks wrote that song Oasis about that nasty place that was out there. And he very well may have because it was a nasty, nasty place. And it was the kind of place I got kicked out of. And I started going and hanging out where, well, there's no well, they're open 24 hours a day.

And

as a little as the young men that jump out of the trees when you drive by like to say we got what you want.

Indeed they did.

Roaster, what are you laughing at?

I'm told this one time and I was at AI was at his treatment center. And and I got to say, most of the guys had been on the other side of this deal. They had been working. They had they they were employees. And, and I'm telling this story, they looking at me like, yeah, you want to pull that shit on my street,

I'll pop a cap and you're whatever.

But fortunately for them, they didn't and I didn't get popped in at least that way. And

I had some bad things happen to me down there, but I enjoyed it. It was fun. They were good at what they did and I was pretty good at what I did. And I found out if I carry my dog with me, that poor dog, you know them guy. And I'd always roll the window down on the dog side and they was always a, you know, greed is a powerful force, isn't it? If it was five guys hit that truck, four of them would run. But they was one that would hang on if I had if I had a $20 bill laying on that dashboard.

Didn't care, man. And I tell him, get in the backwood, come on, get in the back. Let's go. I ain't getting inside. No, I don't want you inside. Get in the back. And we go for a ride and and we just had good old time, you know, And I don't know who's in the middle of my little town at 3:00 in the morning doing what now? Now my now Randy said, Oh yeah, so you were in the paper again for making those hooker turns. And I don't know what that meant. But anyway, they did get me for that too. And

I found out that the newspaper could give you a resentment

that didn't go over too good at the little church. I can tell you that. So and I had candy apple red truck. It wasn't like I was, you know, slipping around in a black one or something. And one night I come too down there and and I know, I mean, and I came too. I didn't just like, you know, kind of casually wake up or I came too. And I didn't know where I was or who these people were or how the hell I got there, much less where my truck was.

And, and I came to and I heard this strange noise, you know, and it was a, it was kind of like,

and I looked up over there and I'm laying, I guess, and I've seen these crusty feet and they were crusty and they had toenails growing over the edge of them. And they were like raising up and down.

And I looked up a little bit more and that was a naked old lady sitting in that chair hitting the crack pipe.

She said, honey, if you OK? You OK?

You got another 20? We can do it again.

I'm not exactly sure what she was talking about.

I'm not sure what it was she was selling for $20.00 at night. Could have been anything,

but I don't one thing. If you're ever wondering whether you're an alcoholic or an addict, you have an experience like I had that night. By God, you'll find out quick, because I never needed a drink so damn bad in my whole life and I got the hell out of there,

all right. That's why I used to be like, you know, I mean, oh, I whooped a lot of ass when I was drinking. No, I got my ass whooped most of the time. When you're drunk and got you a damn Wranglers down around your cowboy boots, it's easy to get drunk and beat up and find yourself in trouble.

So I go to a treatment. I promised my daughter I go to treatment. I knew the treatment would work because Randy went the treatment. Randy and I worked together. We had the same insurance. Really what I did was I ran and hid in treatment and they didn't fire Randy when he ran in hidden treatment. And so I thought, at least I'll get a place I can go and try and figure out what's going on for a little bit.

Funny thing happen

here comes Alcoholics Anonymous

a comes to the treatment center. I remember that first night and, and I will tell you that the blessing in my life was that I was in a treatment center where everyone from the director, the doctor, the psychiatrist, the three psychologists, the nurses, the LPNS, even the people in the kitchen and at the front counter and admin, everyone was actively involved in a 12 step program of recovery in that community, in that treatment center. And they had every kind of meeting you can imagine there. And

all these people, when I got on the outside, I saw them in meetings out there as well. And that doctor wrote an intensive treatment plan for me and he managed it.

They stood by me whenever I was sentenced.

The employer stood by me when I was sentenced.

The wife figured that this was the last chance. She told me years later when we were getting a divorce. If she had known it was going to last that long, she would have never given it to me. It's amazing what happens in sobriety. 25 year marriage, 12 1/2 years drunk, 12 1/2 years sober. Apparently didn't like me one way any better than the other.

I know some of you know how she feels that

can't imagine. Imagine what a drink would do for me.

You don't like me now, which reminds me.

And I said this the last time I spoke because it was a God's honest truth, because Carrie was speaking at gratitude and she was giggling. She said they say that we tell when we come to speak that we tell three stories. She doesn't really talk like that, but in my mind she does.

They they say, they say that we tell three stories. There's the one

that we think we're going to tell before we go to the podium, and then there's the one that we tell while we're at the podium, and then there's the one we think about what we should have said after we've left the podium.

And then there's the 4th, 1:00.

That's the one y'all gonna be telling tonight when you get home. See.

Hopefully I gave some of y'all that wouldn't have come here if you knew I was speaking something to talk about.

I had an amazing experience in treatment. I was damn glad to leave,

but one of the most amazing things that happened was Alcoholics Anonymous came into that treatment center and they made a believer of me at that moment, although I didn't know it at the time, of the power of Alcoholics Anonymous working in the institutions. And I remember that very first meeting when those people came in,

when that meeting was over,

I didn't want them to leave.

I didn't want him to leave. And I remember that that years later, I was at a a men's retreat where they show my name is Bill W the movie

repeatedly. And every year they have the retreat. And, and this one year, me and a couple of fellows set and watched it. And I remember at the end of that movie when it showed the meeting ending and the people getting in their cars and the headlights coming on and the people driving away. And it had probably been

15 years since that night, the treatment center when I didn't want them to leave. And I felt the warm tears rolled down my face because I remembered again,

I didn't want you to leave. I think I really became a part of Alcoholics Anonymous then. I had to do a whole lot more than just that. But I did become a part of Alcoholics Anonymous. Then I was kind of appointed and guided to a man that became my first sponsor. That's an absolute God deal. His wife was instrumental in 12 stepping me into that treatment center. He was a man.

For those of you that have had problems in Alcoholics Anonymous, I can tell you

that this man, much like some other men I know that I admire greatly in Alcoholics Anonymous while I've come here and ahead. But the one drink, this man had to come here many, many, many times.

But it did take in his life. And when he passed away, he was known as the Johnny Appleseed Alcoholics Anonymous because he lived all over the country. He had started new groups, he had started new meetings, he had started new clubhouses. He had sponsored men everywhere, who had sponsored men everywhere, who had sponsored men everywhere. And he truly had become like the Johnny Appleseed at a a going about planting it a little bit here and there.

And

all boats meant a lot to me. The best thing he did was he told me one night when I couldn't come to the meeting because I didn't have a way to drive, was I didn't need to be coming back to that clubhouse anymore if I couldn't get there on my own. Because he didn't think that I needed to be dependent on the people there to get me to and from the meeting all the time. It's time for me to grow up and start tending to myself. And he knew that there was a A around the corner from where I lived. And he knew that I needed to be in a meeting at 8:00 at night. And it wasn't his responsibility or anybody else's to see that I got there. I was the one that said I was

alcoholic

and he hurt my feelings.

But I called and I went to a meeting and it was I could ride my bicycle

elsewhere. It went him 2 miles away. And I get to this meeting and I'm in there the first night and I look around the room and I see all these people and they're completely different from the people in the other clubhouse. It's like 50 miles away. Those were working people and farmers and some retired people and some some tough low bottom guys that were being brought from some of the facilities and guys from corrections. And this place that I went to was over in a little retirement community and they're all in there wearing sweaters and got blue hair and white hair and silver hair

and, and, and just, you know, looking good and laughing and happy. And they're all from up north somewhere.

And I said,

would the new guy like to share? I said yeah

I would.

I don't see how y'all can be so damn happy and possibly have the same problems that I do. And they just started laughing even louder.

Keep coming back, Chuck, keep coming back. Well, we've got time for just one more. Why don't Chuck Wood? Why don't you pick on someone? Was there someone you'd like to hear from? And I looked around that room and I didn't, I mean, I, I was in a room where I recognized nobody. And as I look back around the room, there was a man in the corner that I saw that had been part of that group that brought meetings into that treatment center,

had a very distinctive look.

And I remembered his name because he had a very distinctive message and voice.

And I said I would like to hear from my friend Gus over there. He bought blew coffee out of his mouth across the room. And he looked up and said I'm Gus. I'm an alcoholic. I do not know that man and he is not my friend.

He became my sponsor that night

and he taught me all those things a sponsor should teach someone and most of the things he taught me and the things that he's still teaching me or by the example of the life that he's living. And he showed me

as I showed him for several years.

We don't have to be drunk, but do stupid things.

And he showed me how to live through that. And he showed me what to do when you know that you're not the man that God called you to be. And he showed me how to suit up and show up and give up and grow up and sit down and sometimes I can shut up.

He's amazing guy. He rarely shares in the meetings, but he's always outside when the meetings over either before he either comes early or he's out there late. And more often than not, he's one of the last ones to leave.