The Serenity by the Sea in Destin, FL

Can we please come in?

Thank you, everybody. My name is Kenny and I'm an alcoholic.

I, I actually am a fisherman and, and,

but most of my fishing has been up, I'm from Seattle, WA, by the way. Most of my fishing's been up in Seattle and, and most of the operations that I'm involved with are in Alaska and they don't have too many red snapper in Alaska. So I just want to let you know that, that I'm not even sure I'd, I'd know a red snapper if I saw one. So,

but I have caught a lot of fish larger than 64 1/2 lbs.

I'm exceedingly happy to be here this morning. I'm, I'm incredibly grateful to the Serenity by the Sea Conference for getting in touch with me, for asking me to, to come and be here and for treating me so special. And for my wife, Shannon came down with me and she was, she, she's a little choosy about the, the conferences that we come to. I get asked to speak here and there and, and and sometimes we'll do a little

Tri City's deal or something.

Not so much the Olmac winter roundup. No, Kenny, I'm busy. The dogs we need, you know, I'll stay home for that. We went over to Honolulu, HI this year. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Kenny, I think I can make that one

a Destin FL. She looks it up on the Internet. No, I think we can. I think I can get my mom come take care of the dogs. I think we should be able to work that one out. So we, we've had a fantastic time.

My wife Shannons was raised in Los Angeles and, and I've had her kind of sequestered up in Seattle for we've been married 15 years. We've been together for 17 years and, and all of them happy and just we've had a

really great relationship and but so it's nice You got my wife out into the sunshine and the beautiful white beaches and, and I thank you for that. I want to thank Chris for asking me to

to come and share here, especially and and a particularly I want to I want to thank my host, Clint for being so kind and picking me up and and cleanse the seafarers. Well, I did start out in the fishing business going to see. So we had a lot in common

immediately and we've shared. And once in a while you run across these people in a, a that you just know that this will be a lifelong friend. And I, I know that's going to be the way it will be with, with Clinton, his wife Linda. And I got to know a little about his story and, and it's really, I got to see him stand up here today. His daughters, two of his daughters are here today

for the talk and and to see their father. And it's just so amazing how

we bring families together here. And it just brought me to tears to see Clint up with his with his daughters. And I know how special that is. So, so it's great that you guys are here this morning.

So I, I want to get a couple of things kind of off my mind here 1st and I, I've been, I want to be really clear that I've been the recipient of

incredible kindness in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've been the recipient of unbounding love.

I'm a person that has

seen so many incredible.

If I was to make a top ten list of all of the most loving and kind and considerate stories, I, I've, I've know of, they would all be stories from Alcoholics Anonymous.

It's, it's really amazing. And one of the things that's come to mind for me recently or just these, these things, this love and tolerance of others is our code. It's the line. I really, it's, it's been hitting home with me a lot lately. And Alcoholics Anonymous, how important it is when the new people come into the room that we realize this spiritual potential that I, and I guarantee I'll talk about this in a minute, but I'll guarantee you that when I, the day I got sober, there wasn't anybody thinking, I think we'll bring this guy

to Destin, FL and have them be our Sunday morning spiritual speak.

They, they,

there's a, this beast that says out of our big book. I brought my big book up with me this morning and I always do that when I talk and some of the things, you know, I, I, I may quote a couple things from the book, but I'm probably not going to. You can rest assured I'm not going to open my book and start reading the book to you this morning. But the the

this idea that it says most of us sense that

real tolerance of other people's shortcomings and viewpoints

and

respect for their opinions, our attitudes, which make us more useful.

It means the more open minded I become, the more useful I am to Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's been really important to me.

The I bring my big book and there was actually a time in my sobriety when when the message was Kenny, we're we're going to a meeting and and you're not to share

that, that that we want you to sit and listen here. We're going to go and you're not going to be the the you're not going to be talking today. And there is a reason for that. It's because my story in the beginning was what it was like, what it was like and what it was like story. And it would it would just, it would just never end. It would just, you know, it was the police, poor people, you know, that had to listen to that stuff that that you know, it would just be the I would just go on and on and on. And then I would be well, then I got into treatment. They're thinking, well, finally,

God. And then I and then I, then it would come and then I drank the day I got out of treatment, then I was back in, I was worse than ever. And then I was in jail and then I was in this institution

and there's just but, but it never and and finally, as a result, an early sobriety really of and I got to be a little a little bit careful after our our speaker last night of of, of choosing my words wisely because I used to say, and I and I will continue to say this. It's really tongue in cheek. But you know, I fell into the loving arms of a group of men. That hand carried me through this big book

and and, and that is the truth of it. You know, I

was a person that was not going to get well and Alcoholics Anonymous. And the nice thing is I have a part of my story today.

That's the what happened part that I had a spiritual awakening as the result of the steps haven't been hand carried through this program by a group of men that read this book to me word for word.

And they read every word out of this book to me. And everywhere where there was something that I didn't understand, we looked it up in the dictionary and we, we, we, we read paragraph by paragraph. And it wasn't a study. It was a do they shared their experiences with me. And and I'm always been so grateful for that, that I have that I have this what happened part of my story and this what it's like now. I've been sober since June the 8th of 1989.

I said that 24 years of sobriety in June.

I've been married, as I told you and and with Shannon for 17 of those years. I have a daughter who's 21 years old that came to live with Shannon and I when she was five. We raised her together. She's 21. She's never seen me take a drink.

Some of the stories that I would tell you from from her perspective, she's come and heard me share my story several times. And

and from her perspective, it's always this.

Yeah, Dad, I, I know, I know. But it's like the story of the guy who tells his kids about how he walked uphill to school both ways in the snow and they could barely afford shoes. She's like, I know. No, I know, Dad. Drinking is, you know, too much is not good. And the drugs bad, bad, bad. And yeah, Dad, we know. We know. But she doesn't really get it. She doesn't really get it because the person that she knows is a different man

than the person that came to alcohol. It's anonymous. She knows it's true, but she just doesn't really understand how it could possibly be the same person. She's been with me 21 of those 24 years and she will tell you today that she's told me several times over the last few years that Dad, you just, you know, that you really are becoming a more

calm person. You've got it. You're, you are calming down. And I'm a person that got Alcoholics Anonymous and I had to find a way to calm down or else, and it might seem impossible for you to to believe, but I had periods in early sobriety where I went 10 days without sleeping sober.

That's what was going on in my mind when I got here.

I would stay awake all night long and walk the streets and eat sugar. Probably part of that was, you know, the quadruple lattes. Thank God they didn't have all these rock stars and all that, all that stuff then. But and, and, and to this day, I never have drank one of those kind of energy drinks. But, but had I been early sobriety, I'm sure I'd have been all over those things by the case. So.

I, I just, I just feel compelled to,

to, to, to share a few of those things with you about the, the kindness and the love that, that I received here in Alcoholics Anonymous. And how important that is that when the new person comes in, that we realize that these people have had the crap kicked out of them. And

it makes a difference in the way that we treat these people. And that I, I should reciprocate that, that kind of love to the new people that come into my life today. So I, I think I have been become a kinder and more gentle person the longer I've been sober.

The the this kindness and love that I talk about, it didn't always feel like kindness in love to me. It felt like sometimes I was being attacked or that that this stuff was being forced down my throat. And one of my

one of my mentors would say, Kenny, you know, you might not want to do these things. I didn't want to go to the stores that I shoplift, didn't pay the money back and make those amends.

I didn't want to go to people that I owed thousands of dollars to and tell him here I am and and and and and come up with the money and give him that money. I didn't want to

reveal everything in life with me, in five people in my life. And tell me from the beginning that you know, I know that you've spent a lot of time writing this inventory,

but I also know that there's a few things that you didn't put down.

And I'm not going to leave you alone, but I'm going to leave you here with God so that you can write those things on a piece of paper. Your take it to the Grave list. And when we're all done here today,

I'm going to ask you to read those things to me.

There's a piece in the 10th step. It's in its, in its, you know, the, the, the, the, the 10th step in the big book is so profound that it has this piece that says, you know, they, they, you count the number of times they use the words intuition,

intuitive thought, the inspiration. He even goes further and calls it the 6th sense.

This. He calls it the vital 6th sense.

Vital means life giving. Either we find this or we drink.

The doctor's opinion is really clear that unless we find the ease and comfort that comes at once by taking a few drinks will be restless, irritable and discontent.

That I need to find that ease and comfort in sobriety

that I once found in the drink

or else I'll drink again. That comes through this inspiration, this God connection this this

they they say in the big book are more religious members call it God consciousness, this awareness of some presence larger than myself and this the the vital, the vital 6th sense. The thing that I I think about, I think about the mother when the when the mothers at this the sink and the kid walks behind the mother. The mother doesn't even see the kid, but the mother says, hang on here, What's

what's going on?

And I had, I, I had the, I had the fortune of I'm so happy I got sober when I got sober and I'm happy I got sober with the people I got sober with because they had this awareness, this there was that vital 6th sense, this understanding of Kenny, I know you're holding something back. And I'm going to leave the room for a while and I'm going to let you sit here with God for about 20 minutes and I'm going to come back and we're going to read those things when we're done. And so I was able to do a fifth step withholding nothing. I didn't want to do that,

but the message was that Kenny, this is going to be like a mother's kiss compared to what the booze and drugs are going to do to you.

And I knew that was true.

It was, it wasn't always easy. It wasn't always easy to accept, but there was something I I just inherently knew that it was that this was the last stop in the road for me. So

I, I got,

I was raised in Seattle. I'll tell you a little bit about my story.

I was raised in Seattle. I was raised in an alcoholic home. My stepfather, who I was raised with, died on the streets of Seattle homeless. I was a terrible, terrible alcoholic and never got sober. And I saw him struggle through my entire

youth, saw him and delirium tremens. I saw the effects of alcohol. I saw him screaming out in care. I saw him with violent shakes, those kinds of

my mom got sober. She's been sober now about 40 years.

So, you know, I came from this home and in early. I started drinking when I was about 12 years old. I started drinking much before that, but twelve was about the time, the first time that I ever remember where I intentionally went out to get us my hands on as much booze as I possibly could. And and there was some, you know, there were some things going on in in my life as a child. And, and I think one of the speakers said earlier that it doesn't really matter. This didn't make me an alcoholic. I shared a bedroom with my

who is, you know, an amazing man and he's not an alcoholic and he's slept in the same bedroom as I did when we were growing up. So this isn't what made me an alcoholic. And matter of fact, I sometimes think it's harder for for the other for other people coming into Alcoholics Anonymous. And I think it's important to recognize that sometimes that that it's harder when people

and I've a couple of my favorite speakers are this way and I've sponsored a lot. I got a chance to watch a lot of

men make their bed and walk again. I've had a chance to sponsor a lot of people and alcohol

came from a good family. They had good mothers and fathers. And sometimes it's harder for them because I had the ability, I had something to blame all this stuff on. I didn't know that it didn't have anything to do with that till I got into Alcoholics Anonymous. But when you come from one of these other families, it can be really difficult because you're like, I shouldn't be like this. I shouldn't think like this. Why am I like this? So it doesn't really matter where you come from. You know, this is just my story and

the my house was the house where there was a big party. We actually moved to a new house so that my parents could be closer to their favorite bar.

I that's a that's, that's the that's the, the truth of why we moved there. That was, I don't know if that was why, but that that was, they were definitely the most excited about that, that, that,

that they could now just walk up the street to Don and Isla, which was the the local Tavern. And they would stay there till the Tavern closed about 2:00 in the morning. And then the party would come to our house and it would be just this wild scene. The police would come. There was violence.

The

you know, I I would wake up in the morning. We just moved to this new house. It was a brand new junior high school. I'd wake up in the morning. I was still wet in my bed as a kid.

I would be covered with urine. I didn't have any clean clothes. I didn't know about personal hygiene, so I didn't brush my teeth or comb my hair, take shower. I just Cal dried myself off the best I could. I picked through the clothes that were on the ground, tried to find the cleanest clothes. And I would go to school that way to this new school. And, and I was considered a bit of a freak and, and, and then I had this other deal that that wasn't, wasn't well appreciated, which was

that I would have this deal if, if there's AI don't like the term

drug, a choice, because for me, alcohol was the drug of no choice. I didn't matter. I had no choice over alcohol was rent money. If it was your rent money. If it was, it didn't, it didn't matter. It was the drug of no choice for me. But if there was a drug of choice, I'd say that my first drug of choice was called lack of oxygen to the brain. And what that meant was that I would choke myself as a kid until I would find this euphoria and I would let go just a second before I was going to pass out. And I would just be in this days and the old man could be yelling at me and

it just nothing mattered. So I was a stinky kind of urine soaked kid with this long greasy hair. And then I would choke myself and stagger around. And

I'm glad you find this humorous.

My,

but my, my popularity waned a little bit, you know, in the, in junior high as a result of that.

But you know, this is, this is what I did, you know, I got my hands on some booze. There was a hippie that lived next door. This was the early 1970s and there was a hippie that lived next door to us. And, and he was a really good hippie. So he did the proper thing. He had a once he once a year, he mow his lawn. And, and my brother and I got to do that. It would be about 3 feet tall and we'd go over and cut all his grass down and, and, and then when we were done, you know, it was like a two day affair. When we were done, he would give us some money. And so we went.

Over to him, we said. Listen,

we'd like you to consider rather than giving us money, if you could buy a small call and be in a good hippie in 1972. He thought, you know, he was more than happy to, to buy alcohol for 12 year olds. So.

So he said, he said, yeah, sure. But what kind of alcohol do you want? Well, at my house there was always a gallon jug of Gallo wine on the table. And there was plenty more where that came from. There was always that was just the staple. There was a gallon jug of this this gala line. So I said, well, we'd like wine.

And he said, what kind of wine do you want? And I said, I just kind of, you know, I think I already had that peculiar mental twist going because my answer to him was I kind of thought, what do you mean what? I said? We're concerned with volume. You know, we want, we want

and we want, we want as much wine as you can get with the amount of money that you have. So, so he, he did the, you know, he did the right thing and he said, OK, I, I got you. I figure I know where you guys are coming from. And he left and he came back and he had two grocery sacks and then those sacks were 5 fifths, which are the big bottles of

MD 2020. So,

and, and I do, I like to tell that story just for that reaction right there, because I can, I can end the story. I think I could end the story right there would be just just fine. But, but you know, I, I, I, I, I, you know, this started a pattern in my life. And, and I, I drank that, I got my hands on that alcohol. I drank it as fast as I could. I drank as much as I could. Even the other young kids that we'd invited down to the schoolyard to drink this wine with us, we're saying, hey, I think there's something wrong.

You should not drink this much as such. They had no idea, but they just knew inherently there was something wrong with Kenny's drink on. And, and,

and I got, you know, I, I, I was, I was this real introverted kid in because of all these things that were going on. I didn't talk to anybody. I was frightened to death. But once I had that wine in me and, and that that was something that went well into my drinking was I always knew if I drank a bottle of cheap wine down really fast, I would get that warm feeling able to catch my breath, you know, and, and things like that,

that that day there was a gal at the school that I kind of liked and she was cutting through the schoolyard that night on her way home. And, and I just, you know, I just ran down this hill and professed my love to her, tackled her to the ground and tried to force her to give me a kiss. And and

that was as good as my drinking ever got. That was

and that that's the truth. I mean, it was always I always drink as much as I could as fast as I could. Years later, you know, and things progressed for me very, very quickly. I ended up our home was

a broken home. I ended up in in foster homes and group homes and institutions. I turned to a life of crime to support a drug habit and ended up arrested and in jail and

never made it to high school.

The, the,

you know, there were a couple of things along the way. I, John mentioned I was a fisherman and that's, you know, I, I took a job as a fisherman when I was 17 years old. I made my first trip to Alaska and I got on a, a fishing boat and I just love these guys. You know, they were just, they were incredible people. And it was the first time in my life I'd been around real men who worked hard

and they took me under their wing and they, they taught me how to work and they taught me some skills and, and I really excelled. And in those days it was really the wild, Wild West in Alaska. There was today I'm still in that business and, and I manage a fleet of vessels and, and we've got a couple hundred guys working for us. And you know, it's a really, but it's a whole different fishery now. Every

boat before you go out, the Coast Guard comes down and does an inspection. You have to have certificates to show that everybody on the boats passed the drug test. It's a whole different deal. But there was none of that

shenanigans when I was

and so everybody on the boat was drinking and and doing drugs and we didn't, we didn't like work hard and play hard. We played hard while we were working and doing dangerous work, completely out of our minds. And the guys that I worked with on the boat,

we're doing the same thing. But they knew that there was there was an intensity to Kenny's drinking that bothered him and it scared him. And those guys put me through treatment twice,

paid for my treatment and put me through treatment twice before they fired me And the last three years of my my drink. And it was that,

you know, I'm so enamored and in in love with Bill Wilson

and his story and his writing abilities.

And when I was taken through the book and I looked at Bill's story and he said I'd written lots of sweet promises. This time I met my wife happily observed at this time I meant business. That means his wife is person who is probably his greatest doubter at that time. But this time she realized something was different about Bill. He really meant it this time. There was some kind of a shift or a change in Bill that he meant.

And then he writes that heartbreaking line that shortly thereafter I came home drunk and I knew what that meant.

I knew what that meant. I knew that what he meant by then. Then he went back and and that was his self, self will. And then he said, OK, well, he went back and he learned all about, they said, certainly this was the answer, self knowledge. And I'd been there. I'd been to the treatment centers and learned all about alcoholism and knew all kinds of things and had all kinds of intellectual concepts and I knew everything.

And then he says, you know, he was off, you know, how could this have happened? And he's off drinking again. And then his last deal that he tried was the fear sobered me for a bit, trembling, you know, I stepped from the hospital, a broken man. Fear trembled, sobered me for a bit. And I understood that,

but I so, but I came to understand that self will and self knowledge and fear will never keep me sober.

I knew that I tried all those things. The fear that God, I don't want to go through that deal of when I, when I, before I got sober, I was 28 years old. I was living in the back of my mother's house and, and you know, I, I had overdosed in her bathroom and tore the shower curtains and everything off the wall. I was yellow. I was John as these guys had beat me up in a bar and, and I had to have surgery on my left eye. I was just a total

wrath. And I can tell you that story. But then I can think about, you know, that mind of the alcoholic that at some time I won't be able to recall that. And if I do, it's going to be vague as if it happened to somebody else. And the thing that I will recall is that when I drink a bottle of wine down real fast,

I'll remember that

it's the mind of the alcoholic and and that and that, you know, there was an answer for that, there was a solution. So

the, the last few days of my drink and I'd lost it. There's there's a part in the big book. I'd lost everything worth, you know, that, that we, if we have this obsession that drives us. And that's the way it was for me. I had an obsession that I would somehow be able to put the right combination in. If I got the right combination of the right drugs and the right amount of booze and everything was just right, just for a minute,

I would be able to take one deep breath and from there I was going to be able to get sober. I just thought if I could just get to that spot for a minute, I'll be able to stop.

And I and, and and that type of obsession. I lost all things worthwhile in life. I was ended up behind. There was a a McDonald's down in Seattle and next door to the McDonald's was a little store and a couple of things. And they had,

they had, there was a place called the Baron off Tavern, which is still there. The McDonald's just recently was tore down and the Baron off Tavern was there. And the Baron off Cavern is a Viking bar in Seattle, which means that's where all the Norwegian fishermen go to drink.

So I kind of knew the the area a little bit. And the McDonald's, if you walk by the front, it was a facade. But if you walked around behind, there was a space about 6 feet between those two buildings with some bushes. And I would be, I was, I'd crawled back in there. I built a little cardboard lean to so people, even if they got back in there, they couldn't see exactly what was going on. And

you know, there was, I would hear these, these, I could hear the people through the drive through. And I would, it was a real

kind of a nerve racking way to live because I could hear all this noise, the world going on from in my little box. And, and I would hear people come in and say, I'd like that #3 super size with the Diet Coke. And I thought they were saying somebody called the FBI. There's a freak back here shooting Coke.

So it was really, and it was a nerve wracking way to live.

And

but, you know, Bill Wilson writes about those final days of drinking, and we're so lucky to have this rich literature here in Alcoholics Anonymous. After I was taken through the steps,

a really wise man suggested that I, He wanted me to go back and read the big book, but he wanted me to

read it like I was reading poetry.

He wanted me to. He said you got to find a way to spiritually blow through that. People say read the black and white. He wanted me to spiritually blow through that. What is the essence of what's being said here? And we're so fortunate that we we had Bill Wilson holding the pen and somebody that was so eloquent.

The great fact is just this and nothing less, that I've had deep and effective spiritual experiences of revolutionized my entire attitude and outlook upon life. The person that wrote the pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. The guy that wrote the Four Horsemen. Care, bewilderment, frustration, despair. Unhappy drinkers who read this page will understand,

but in the in the final moment, this person who is so eloquent

wrote the way it was for me

at the end in buying at McDonald's and he bills holding a pen and he writes no words can tell

Somehow I had AI had a friend that was going to an AA hall out in back of this McDonald's was it was a strip mall and out behind there it was kind of a horseshoe shaped parking lot behind and and there were some decks and one of these was an AA hall in Seattle called Fremont. I could see the people out on the back deck sometimes laughing and having a good time. And this friend of mine who I'd actually that that neighborhood where I lived, his family actually took me in for a year. I lived with

family. They saw there was trouble in my home and they took me in. So they were like family to me. And he was going to AAA meetings at that hall. So I thought, well, if I could just get out from behind here, if I could get into that meeting, my friend Don's gonna give me a place to stay for the night. That was the best hope that I had when I came to you, was that somebody would let me stay in their house and that he would nurse me back to health, which he'd done several times. And I came to,

I came into to Alcoholics Anonymous on a Thursday night on June the 8th of 1989. It was an 8:00 meeting.

I don't know what kind of

spiritual help I received that allowed me to get out from behind that McDonald's and walk around the corner and walk in the front door of that hall, but I did. I was emaciated. I was filthy dirty. I had 0 minutes of sobriety. I had, I had no shoes on my feet. My I had a pair of jeans that were filthy. My shoes were in a bag that I was carrying in my hand because my feet had abscessed and I couldn't get my shoes on anymore because my feet were sore

and I sat through the meeting. My friend didn't show up. I don't know if I thought he lived there at the hall or what, but he wasn't at the meeting

and something happened to me that I didn't expect

and the meeting started wrapping up and I was sitting in my chair and I just started crying in this Amy big alligator tears. And I think back and I just think like, you know, I just when I think about that, when I cry now, you know, there's something attached to it. And then at least I I knew I was crying, but there was it was empty, just hollow there. I could have been sitting there, not crying. I could have been laughing. I could have it would didn't matter. There was nothing left. You know, it was just totally

empty and these tears were streaming down my cheek. And,

and I like to say that I learned about giving

from experts and Alcoholics Anonymous,

a man who is to become my sponsor, came up to me after the meeting. He was the secretary of the meeting that night,

came up after the meeting and said hey, my friends and I've been talking and if you'd be willing to go to detox, we'd be happy to give you a ride down there. Matter of fact, he said. We've already made a few phone calls and and they got a bed for you.

So I thought, well, how in the hell do

how in the hell do these guys know that I need to go to detox? I mean, I had

and then I thought, well, you know, I got kind of a busy social calendar and I,

you know, how long is this going to take? And

but I knew the answer, you know, it was it was, yeah, I'll go. There's no big deal. And that intuitive thought, that inspiration didn't take me to Seattle detox. They took me up to Everett, which is one city just north of Seattle, not very far, but it was just divinely inspired deal that they took me there because if I think they'd have taken me to downtown, I would have just maybe walked out the door. But once I was up in Everett and they got my clothes away from me and I was in my pajamas,

you know, a thought to suicide. We're running through my head. And I thought, well, I'll just hang myself here in this detox. And I couldn't find anywhere to attack a sheet because they designed these rooms for people like me. And,

and,

and just the idea of trying to argue with these people to get my to get my clothes back. I just didn't have any game left

to argue with them to give me my clothes back and have to go through the guy. And then he's gonna bring in second base and third base and he's a guys are gonna try to convince me to stay. And I knew the whole deal. How, what an effort it was gonna take just to get my clothes back. And then I was gonna have to try to figure out how I was gonna get bust money. I didn't know how to catch a bus from Everett to Seattle, but how I was gonna try to get bus money, hustle that up to try to get to Seattle, to try to tell Con somebody and try to. What kind of a pack of lies am I gonna have to come up with

to get somebody to help me to get well?

And I just didn't have it in me. So I got my first five days of sobriety at the Evergreen Manor Detox in Everett, WA. Al my, the guy that took me there that night picked me up after 5 days. And he owned a little car lot down on Hwy. 99 in Seattle. And this was a little dirt lot, you know, maybe had a dozen cars for sale. And there was a little apartment that he'd fixed up in the back. And he let me stay there in that apartment. And every day he would come by, and for every day,

six months,

Al would come seven days a week. Before I ever remember missing a day, Al would come and knock on the window and wake me up and he would take me up to Jack-in-the-box and buy me a breakfast Jack and a cup of coffee and talk to me about Alcoholics Anonymous.

And Al was the first man I ever prayed with in my entire life. I was 28 when I came to a A.

I started, I started in on this, this path of working the steps. There was a group of people and there was a group of people that were working out of the big book. They found me hanging out at Fremont Hall. They would, they would do what's called trolling the bottom. They would come by fine look for the face of hopelessness. And there they found me And and they, you know, told me that this guy Frankie called it special education A, A

and

what that what that meant was that that a guy like me wasn't going to get the solution hanging out in the meetings. And there was a difference between

being, I mean, if you want to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, it's a great thing. All you know, there's only one requirement. And and I tend to. I tend to like the short version of the third tradition.

The only requirement is a desire to stop drinking.

But if you want recovery from alcoholism, you're gonna have to get to work. And there's some things you got to. There's a difference between being in the meeting and in the solution. If you think you're in the solution because you're in the meeting, you're not. That was a great message for me. It was a huge gift. And these guys were going to be doing this deal. They had my I had, there was a guy that was one day sober longer than I was. I was actually, I, excuse me, I was one day sober longer than Patrick.

And Al was his sponsor as well. And Patrick actually started going down to this workshop and I thought, well, you know, I can't, I got to get down there. You know, I'm, I'm one day sober longer than him. And he's kind of relying on me quite a bit here to I better get down there and make sure they're doing it right. And I've been to treatment quite a few times. So,

so I started going down to the workshop and, and, you know, some really miraculous things started happening in that workshop.

I, you know, I started reading the book from this place that I talked about. I started realizing that this book was meant for people that couldn't stop drinking,

that had no answer, people that were this chronic type, this hopeless type, this type whom all other methods had failed. And, and there was something there for me. And besides the people that were doing the workshop, they were so full of life and so happy. And there was just, you know, there was just this camaraderie and, and I just, I just really felt at home with these guys. And

we got close to being able to, to do our, we got up to the third step prayer and, and there was a guy coming to town that was doing a little retreat up in the mountains. He was a guy from California.

Everybody thought, well, geez, let's, let's go up to this retreat, the whole workshop, go up to the retreat

and, and when we're up there, we'll do our third step prayer together as a group at this retreat. And Patrick and I thought Patrick had called a couple nights. He called down to the, the car lot. He was staying in a little boarding room right up the street, had a little basement room and a house. And I was, I really was. I was

always had a little game. I could always get

a find some place to stay or some girl that would let me stay at their house or some person, you know, I was really homeless just for a few minutes at the end. But Patrick was a guy that was right off the skids and had been for a long time. And he had this little room and he'd called me one night and said, hey, you know, after we were talking about God and the third step, he said I had this wild experience. I was laying on my bed and I felt like all of this energy just was coming out of my