The Second Tradition group in San Jose, CA

I would now like to introduce our speaker for tonight, Glenn J from San Leandro, CA Welcome Glenn. Hi everybody, My name is Glenn and I'm an alcoholic. Umm, first, I'd like to welcome, umm, Jason and Ron. Umm, Believe it or not, most of the people that are attending tonight know how you're feeling right now, and they also know that you haven't been having a real good year so far. Because

that's the way it was for us. Uh, I'd also like to thank Thaddeus for asking me to do this. I, I consider it a real privilege. Umm, And since we're gonna be talking about a deadly illness, uh, a killer malady for the next several minutes, I thought that we'd start off kind of on a lighter note. I've got a couple of questions that I'd like to ask the people in the audience tonight. First,

how many people here have driven drunk more than 100 times?

Next, how many people because of their drinking have had to spend some time in the back of a police car?

And then finally, my last question is how many people because of their drinking have ended up peeing in a closet? Well, I can't admit to that, and if you did, I'm a little embarrassed for you. I will tell you, though, not to feel bad because when I was in rehab,

I had some trouble getting to the bathroom. And I'm here to tell you it didn't involve urine. Uh, and, and, but that's exactly what I needed. Umm, it wasn't so much that I needed to stop drinking, although that was an important goal of mine at that time. What I really needed was ego deflation.

Ego deflation at depth was absolutely critical to my

early recovery. And, and right now, OK, if I get to the point where I think I've got this or I know what I'm doing or I'm an expert or an authority, umm, I'm back to being due. And I don't want to be due before it slips my mind. I want to let you know that I have a sobriety date. It's July 24th, 2008. I have a sponsor and I have a Home group. Now with that sobriety day, I've got

11 years of sobriety and I still consider myself a newcomer. And I'll tell you why. I've learned a lot. In fact, uh, a big part of the reason that I'm sober today is because old timers took an interest in me. And at about the two year point, I was talking to an old timer and he told me, Glenn, you need to consider yourself a newcomer until you've got 10 years. And that served me well, uh, for a long, long time,

about eight years, I walked up to him and I said, OK, I'm closing in on 10 years. Uh, am I still a newcomer? And he says, consider yourself a newcomer. So you got 15 years. And then I started to see the pattern. If I consider myself new, if I approach my recovery in a childlike manner for as long as I can, I'm gonna be much better off than if I

decide that I've got this. I, I need to tell you that I am,

I am a real alcoholic. And also even maybe more important, I'm a recovered alcoholic and those things are significantly different. 1st, I'm going to talk a little bit about what it means to me to be a real alcoholic. It means that I've got three particular qualities that aren't working to my advantage. First, there's something wrong with my body. OK,

the literature calls it an allergy. An allergy of the body. And when I was new

that made absolutely no sense to me because I need to tell you, I was dragging over a quart of hard liquor a day. And when somebody says allergy, I think to myself, hold it. I'm not sneezing, I'm not itching, I don't have any hives. What is this allergy thing? And then the old timers explained to me, actually I think it was my sponsor, explain this one. He said

an allergy is an abnormal reaction. I have an abnormal reaction

to alcohol that 90% of the population doesn't have. I'll give you an example. My ex-wife, when she would take a couple of drinks, she would say things like oh, I'm starting to feel it. I think I'm gonna stop. Well, when I take a couple of drinks I say, oh I'm starting to feel it and I'm just getting going. It's time to go downtown. As a matter of fact, let's go over to the city. Better yet, maybe we ought to go to Lake Tahoe. And if

chance to think about it, I'm gonna suggest we go to Mexico and it doesn't work to my advantage. I've got an abnormal reaction, which means once I start I can't guarantee my behavior. I used to think that my abnormal reaction was once I started I couldn't stop, but that isn't true upon further examination. Sometimes I have 23456 drinks and I'd stop, but it was always a wild card.

You never knew if I was gonna be cool or if I was, uh, or if I was gonna be not cool. And so, since I can't guarantee my behavior, that makes one part of me a real alcoholic. Second, I have what's called an obsession of the mind. And an obsession, again, had to be explained to me. But obsession is an idea that overpowers all other ideas.

And my obsession is I wanna drink. Believe it or not,

even when I don't want to drink, I end up drinking. And I can't control that. Third, the last and most difficult part of being a real alcoholic for at least for me to understand, is I have a spiritual malady. I've got a spiritual problem. And again, I had to look it up in a dictionary. What's spiritual mean? It means I didn't have a relationship with a higher power, and I could not see the relationship

between drinking and a higher power. But it was Chuck Chamberlain who explained it best. He had a little diagram that he would show at his retreats, and a little diagram had a stick man which represented me, a big wall near the stick man. And on the other side of the wall was the world, all the people in the world, and a higher power, basically God. And it turned out that my enormous ego

was so big that it erected that wall between the world, its people, and God. And I was completely isolated and that had to get fixed. And as a recovered alcoholic, two of those three things have been eliminated. And, and, and I consider that a miracle because establishing a relationship with a higher power that resulted in a spiritual awakening, I could not possibly see how that had anything to do with

drinking at all. But I'm here to tell you that obsession of the mind, the, the one that told me I wanna drink, that I did that day after day after week after year after year after year. I was drinking, I would say roughly 360, three days a year for several years. And that's not easy to do because at the end of my drinking, I was putting away over a quart of hard liquor every day.

And that's not easy to do. Some of us might have been able to do it once or twice, but to do it and then the next morning, wake up with that, with that pounding headache, with that, that mouth that felt like it was full of mud and it was being stomped on back in World War 2 by the entire German army. My stomach would hurt. But I had a plan. When I woke up with a hangover like that, I would immediately pound four ibuprofen

and drink as much, at least two of these. And I knew that relief was coming. But because of that obsession of the mind which I no longer have, I would do it again and again and again. And it was,

you know, I think about it today and and, and it appears what I was doing was committing a slow suicide because I was I was good with being an alcoholic. I was just gonna drink myself until until the end, keep drinking. But you and I had both seen people where that's happened. And it's a long, slow, lonely process. It is painful. And by the time the death comes, the

wish he was gone a long time before that. And bonus fact, anybody that I ever cared about, anybody that I ever thought the approval of, anybody that I ever loved, by the time that death would have come, they would have hated me and they would have been glad I was gone. Anyway, I'm not here to tell you that I'm sober as a result of Alcoholics Anonymous.

A, A had a big part in it, but what really happened was that I established a relationship with God.

I had a spiritual awakening. Oh, you could call that a psychic change. Or the old timers used to say, Glenn, you need to change your thinking. And that is the result of me doing the steps and I, I don't wanna drink anymore. That obsession was lifted for me years ago and it's been gone for a long time. And that's why I keep doing the things that I do

so it doesn't come back.

I need to, I need to rely on other people. I believe God works through other people. And so I can't isolate like I used to. I have to. And I was particularly pleased to see a couple of members from my, for my group here tonight because, uh, if I, if I try and do this alone, I'm doomed anyway. I need to get around to telling you what I was like,

what happened and what I'm like today.

Now, I grew up in San Leandro. I've spent most of my life here. Uh, my parents, my parents were great. I cannot, I cannot blame any of my drinking at all on them. They were hard working. They were moral. They tried to show me the right way to live. And, and, and I'll tell you the truth, I wanted to be a good little boy. I wanted to, I tried real hard but

sometimes I felt like I just didn't fit in. I can't explain why, if if I had the vocabulary

that I have now, I would have explained it like this. I was restless, I was irritable and I was discontented, and

I waited absolutely as long as I could before I took that first drink. And so at nine years old, that's exactly what I did. And I can explain to you with two reasons why I did that. My parents, who didn't drink very much, they would have Christmas parties. And I remember three of my four uncles who were alcoholic,

they would be lined up along the kitchen wall, sitting on the floor,

singing, laughing, carrying on. And they were drinking. And I thought, hey, those guys are having fun. I need to look into this. And I'll tell you one other aspect, too. It kind of points to one of my character defects. I knew that taking that first drink was wrong, but I did it anyway. I was curious and I was defiant. So I picked a a Saturday morning. I knew I couldn't go to school under the influence. And I went out to the kitchen.

He had kept the liquor in the cabinet above the stove. And I got a tall water glass. It was this big and I filled it with a little bit from each bottle. Brandy, gin, vodka, uh, whiskey, Scotch, and there are probably a couple other ones. I took that back to my bedroom. I got in the closet because I didn't want my dad. My dad would catch me at everything that I did wrong. So I got in the closet and I drank as much as I could. And I'm here to tell you I don't drink for the taste, All right,

it from the jet. I was drinking for the effect and I drank as much as I could slowly because I felt like throwing up. And I can remember this, this is 50 years ago. I remember this going more than 50 years actually going to the bathroom, which is in the next room, rinsing out the glass, going to the kitchen, putting the glass back so I wouldn't get caught. And I blacked out. And that's not a good sign for an alcoholic. All right, so I didn't drink again for a long time, but

yeah, yeah, I, I, I have a lot of stuff now and I give away a whole bunch of stuff to find out what happened when I blacked out when I took that first drink. So I didn't drink for a long time after that. It was several years. But I do want to tell you one other story of so you get to know, uh, so you get to know how I operate, OK. My elementary school was about two blocks away from the house and I was 10 or 11 years old. And I was coming home and I looked over

one of my neighbors lawn and I saw a brown paper bag and I can tell there was something in that bag, OK. And I walked over, I picked it up, I looked inside and I started running. I started running towards my house because I knew if I could get that bag full of money under my bed, there might be some kind of hope that I would keep it. But remember, I told you I tried to grow up trying to be a good little boy, OK? So soon, I told my parents about

that. It it has about $100 in it. And when you go back in the 1960s, that's a lot of dough, OK? And my parents did the right thing. Somehow. They found the kid who was selling statues door to door who lost a bag of money. And the right thing to do is give it back to her, right? And I ended up getting a $5 reward. And that's when my character defects started to grow because I thought, wait a minute, I found it,

it's under my bed. It's 100 bucks, I deserve at least half of it. And I didn't get half and I was pissed.

And I, I, I vowed right then that if I could find something that nobody was looking at, I was gonna take it. So my dishonesty grew from there. And I also, uh, started to develop selfishness and self centeredness. And if you've read the literature, you know that that's the root of my trouble. OK, It's not drinking, it's selfishness and self centeredness. But I didn't know that. And so I also found out that resentment and

and pride and lust and envy and jealousy and a whole bunch of other things drove me, but I couldn't see it. For example, most of the things I've done throughout my life were done for fear. OK, I've I've been reading the big book for the past 10 years. So when I do this kind of stuff, when I stand up in front of other people, I don't look like a complete idiot

and, and, and have people laugh at me. That's part of the reason that drives me

fear and these these character defects, they kind of grew and grew and grew over the years. Anyway, I got into high school and I think I was about a sophomore and one of my friends said, hey, let's go to the drive in movies. They're right down here in Union City. And the way they rolled is they would they would charge by the car loan. So we occasionally, maybe once a month, maybe not even that often, we get a whole bunch of teenagers together in one

are some of them would go in the trunk. But since my ego is growing, I never ended up at the trunk. OK, so we get into the drive-in movies and I can't even explain how, but everybody would have a bottle of Boone's Farm strawberry wine. And I'm here to tell you once again, I was not drinking for taste. I was drinking for the effect. I know there's one member here who

happened to like Boone's Farm Strawberry wine, but if you ask me, it tastes like gasoline. OK, I haven't had it in over 50 years,

and I still remember that case. I'm absolutely convinced it's not made with grapes. But it didn't make any difference because I was drinking for the effect, right? And it's a drive in movies. Think about it. A bunch of teenagers, nobody's watching the movie. Everybody's got their radio tunes in the same FM station. We were all laughing. There was high school girls. It was a good time. And the worst thing that ever happened, There was 22 worst things that ever happened to me. When I would come home, sometimes I would get in bed

this the, the ceiling would be spinning around. OK, small price to pay. And I could remember one time having the dry heat. OK, but that's stuck in my mind too, and did not work to my advantage. And I decided at that point, I'm never going through that again. And so that would kind of swaddle my drinking. I knew that I had to have some kind of foundation in my stomach. And then if I hammered down that bottle of of Boone's farm that I was gonna end up throwing up again. And it was

foot. And so I did not do that at the drive in movies. We had a great time, OK, There were no DUI S back then. There were not even any fist fights and certainly nobody got killed. All those things were going to happen later in my training career. But it's a drive in movies. It was all good. And I learned a formula. It was a recipe that that did not work to my advantage. It was drinking

equals fun plus no consequences. And I can't tell you if it was the liquor, but throughout the rest of my life I would come upon statements like that and and their lives straight up lies. Drinking does not equal fund plus no consequences. But somehow, I don't know, maybe I'm delusional. Maybe that's another one of my character defects, but that's the recipe that got stuck up in here. OK, and, and, and I'll tell you, I was

students until then, but I went to college. I started at Cal State Hayward, now Cal State East Bay, and I got involved in smoking marijuana And, and then I, I transferred to the University of California in Berkeley. OK. And I had a routine, all right. I would drive to school in the morning. I could park my car right next to where my classes were for 1/4. I'm going to say that again. Park all day in Berkeley for 1/4 and I would go to class.

The morning in the early afternoon, come home and the and do my homework, have dinner with my mom, my dad and my brother. And by the way, I need to point out my brother's the reason that I got into recovery. I wouldn't have done it without him. And so in that sense, I owe my life to him. But anyway, continuing, we'd have dinner and then I go over my friend's house from high school and we play cards. We play, we play poker for money and we'd be drinking

and smoking and having a good time and I liked it. OK, You need to know something else about me. Without divine intervention, how I feel becomes the most important thing in the world. And I will do anything to further that goal, anything. And that's why I like to, to get to get drunk all the time. I couldn't deal with any disappointment or any depression or, or even resentment

want to deal with it. I just went to the bottle and, and for a long, long, long, long time, it fixed it. Anyway, I persevered at Cal and I got an engineering degree and a degree in math And I was, uh, I was recruited by Bechtel in San Francisco at that time, largest construction company in the world. Umm, and yeah, I was working in San Francisco. Sometimes I go to job sites. Within five years, I had a corner office and I had a dozen engineers

working for me. But even that, yeah, I had a ride every every month or so. We would go down to the bar in the bottom of the high rise building and we would just get wasted. I mean, that was not normal drinking. I mean, I can remember driving across the Bay Bridge with one eye open on. I'm gonna go with dozens of occasions. It was a regular thing. And through the years, my drinking just got worse and worse

and worse until at the end I, I gotta tell you, I retired early. I retired when I was 49 years old because I took advantage of four O 1K plans and I was terrible with the money and we had a budget and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, that didn't work to my advantage either because now I had more time to drink and uh, where I was still working, I'd be drinking about 1/2 a quart every day. But after I retired it it, it grew to 1/4 day

and I had liquor stashed all throughout the house. I had absolutely no friends but no girlfriend. I was living here at home with my mother and the rest of my family was afraid of me. And I was completely OK with that because of the extreme amount of self centeredness that I had. Myself, involvement, myself, absorption myself, even self pity. I would take advantage of self pity to drink more and just keep doing it

and doing it and doing it anyway. Now I need to tell you what happened. OK so I was I'm I'm a certified BBQ judge. OK I know I'm changing subjects quick but I was at a BBQ contest and I got an e-mail from a lawyer who said my mom wanted to meet with me to discuss my situation. And I thought hey wait a minute I might be a drunk but this don't look too good. So I decided my plan was I'll go to my personal position and

talk this over with him and see what he has to say. And he said, yeah, Glenn, I think you ought to go to this meeting with a lawyer and your mother. And it turns out my brother went too. But my next idea was I'll go to my personal attorney. I go to him. I pay him money to look out for my own best interest. Right. He's going to say run. No, he said the same thing. The doctor said, maybe you ought to go. And so

reluctantly, I got wasted one more time and I went and they, of course, they wanted me to go into rehab.

They have restraining orders. My mom and my brother, my close. That's the only close family I have. Oh, I need to explain. I got a lot of cousins, OK, at least 30 cousins and a whole bunch of them are in the program. But I wasn't that close to them. The only people I really even gave cared about at all was my mother and my brother. And I've got to tell you, I was this close to walking away from, you know, because I didn't want to go to rehab. I had a rough idea that that big book was not going to be good news. And when

my brother drove me to rehab, I remember they asked me a few questions. It's kind of like an intake interview. And I could remember walking away from that intake interview guy. And even though I was walking, I can't show you, my hand was up against the wall. I was using the wall for support. And at the same time I asked him, hey, you think I could stay the weekend and maybe just detox and then bail. And he said no. And it's a good thing because,

uh, most detoxes, I don't know if you're aware,

but a typical detox takes between 3 days and seven days. All right. And when I got to the two week point and I was not detox, the, I found out years later, the medical staff was having a meeting every day saying did Glen clear, did Glen clear, did Glen clear and Glen didn't clear until week three. OK. And that's extreme. And what they were thinking is Glenn's got a wet brain, OK, Because some people don't detox. Some people drink themselves into the point of permanent

mental

deficiency, brain damage. I was that close. They didn't think, they didn't think I was gonna detox, but I did. And, and during that time, I was no picnic to be around. I had to make amends to counselors and to other people. Uh,

I have to explain the, the new people, they weren't like us. They weren't real nice to other people. They gave me a hard time and I'll admit I was not exactly, you know, people, person, mood and there's people I wanted to hurt

and, and uh, I went to MPI, which is a hospital in Oakland. It's a 30 day rehab place. And one of the people, one of the new folks, he had, uh, I think a couple days less than me. Umm, we were close to duking it out and he started calling me game over. OK, I was already pissed. I was harboring resentment and I got people with less than 30 days calling me game. Oh, and I almost lost it. I mean, they could have 5150 me so quick

that. Well, anyway, that nickname has stuck with me because I gotta tell you, there's people in my Home group. There was a guy, the guy I went to a sober house, OK. And the guy who managed the sober house, he walked up to me last year, 10 years of sobriety. And he goes, Glenn, I really didn't think you were gonna make it. And it wasn't like I was doing anything odd, OK? I wasn't doing a sideshow in my sports car in the parking lot. I was just walking into our Home group.

Dude walked up to me and said, Glenn, we didn't think you were gonna make it. And that was 10 years ago. Anyway, my great idea in rehab was I'm gonna get all the literature, Doctor Bob and the good old timers, as Bill sees it, a comes of age big book 12 and 12A pamphlet. Yeah, bring up. I'm gonna get as much self knowledge as possible. Unfortunately, I hadn't read up to the point in the big book where it says self knowledge doesn't help. And the, the people, the re the

at the rehab, MPI told me Glenn put down that literature, including the big book. And they said what you need to do is go to a silver house and get a sponsor. Go to a silver house and get a sponsor. I must have heard that 100 times. Go to a sober house and get a sponsor. And by that time, I realized things are either gonna get better or they're gonna get worse. And so I went to a sober house. And the sober house was no picnic, all right. But during the first week I was out, I got a Home group and

I got a sponge. OK, and I'm here to tell you I had a lot of comments, questions and suggestions while I was going through the 12 steps. It's amazing that my first sponsor didn't fire me because I would have told myself to shut up. And I'm talking on the first step and me and him lasted all the way. Well, shoot, we work through the traditions too. Well, almost all of them. And anyway,

uh,

that's when I found my Home group and that's been absolutely vital, particularly during these pandemic times because those hundred guys, it's a men's group, men's answer group. Tuesday, 7:00 PM. Those guys know me, all right? And so if I start acting in an off manner and believe me, that's more common than than you'd come to believe based on what I'm wearing, they're going to call me out, OK? And because we haven't had these meetings and because there hasn't been a hospital institution,

uh, stuff which I rely on heavily, heavily, I've had to call other Alcoholics and other Alcoholics have called me. And remember, I told you, I believe that God works through other people. And that's how I've maintained my spiritual awakening. My spiritual, the, the whole reason that I'm sober is because I talked to, I know and I talked to other Alcoholics on a regular basis and I got to tell you something, OK? I'm not an authority. And if I say anything

that your sponsor disagrees with, your sponsor is right. But I hear things in meetings like

just don't drink and go to meetings. Well, I'm here to tell you, if I knew how to not drink, not only would I not need to go to meetings, I wouldn't need a sponsor. I wouldn't need a Home group. I wouldn't need to be doing this. I wouldn't be needing to do hospitals and institutions work since I just not drank. But that's not within my capability. I gotta tell you one of the things too, I moved in at

around 2 years of sobriety to, uh, a house. I, I rented a room from a couple who had been married for these 30 years and both of them had 30 years of sobriety. OK. And even with my UC Berkeley double major working for Vector. Oh, and by the way,

I didn't tell you, but I worked several years on the space shuttle too. These guys had to give me remedial a, a it was Glen, just follow us around, OK. And so they took me to meetings and I saw him working with other people and I saw him being of other service. And that is what got through to me. OK. I owe my life to those people too. They've moved away since then, but I talked to him on the week on the phone every other week at a minimum. And if I got a big problem, I call folks like

that up because if I roll with my ideas, I'm doomed. Yeah, yeah. I can't manage my own life. I like the way in the back of how it works when it says we're alcoholic and cannot damage my. I can't manage my own life sober. I need help not only from God for, but for people like you and from the new people I work with, I need help from them too. And I'm completely OK with that because I got a good life now. I got a life that I'm happy with. And,

and, and that's the whole reason I came to speak tonight is if, if you're fairly new, OK, there's hope there's help in Alcoholics Anonymous. It works. I personally know thousands of people that this is worked for. I know them, I see them on a regular basis. And in a, a, if you look at the statistics, there's 2 million people in a, a, OK. And if this thing didn't work, there wouldn't be 2 million people

in a A Sure, it'd be better if there was 10 million because we're only scratching the surface. But anyway, I followed these old timers around and I got comfortable with the a, a design for living because I thought, do the steps one time and you're done. And and you know, I got through step 12. I'm good to go, right? Exactly wrong. Once again, my ideas don't work. I have to adopt the design for living that works not only for me, but for you guys too.

OK. And through that Home group, that's how I got to go through to my first International Convention in San Antonio. 2 old timers said, hey, we're going to the International Convention, we're going at a pickup truck. You wanna go? And I said yeah. And we had a great time. I mean it. We drove from after my Home group was over on a Tuesday night. We drove straight through all night and most of the next day to get to San Antonio. And we had just a great time and

fans out there. What stands out there is I was able to help a couple of old timers at that convention because I know San Antonio, I used to live there. I would go there often. And I told them, here's what I do if I were you. And they listened to the newcomer. They didn't go to the Alamo because everybody that comes to Texas wants to go to the Alamo. And we got wiped out of the Alamo. There's no good news

at the Alamo, the Alamo, the Alamo stocks, it's just terrible. Go spend some time on the river walk, go to this BBQ place. It's three blocks away. It's the best in the state. And and they did that and I was able to help them. And little by little by little, you know, I started working with new people. I started trying to help other people. I got used to it because I, I didn't get sober till I was 54 years old. OK. And this self centeredness, these these defects, selfishness,

dishonesty, resentment and fear, they were deep. They were deep. And I'm not here to tell you they're gone, but I'm doing a lot better. And,

and, and, and it's it's damn near a miracle because I remember I was good with drinking myself to death. OK, so I go, I decide, hey, that first International Convention was pretty good. Let's go to Atlanta. We spent two weeks in Atlanta. And one thing that I did there, I found out I looked on Groupon because I'm kind of economical. Some of my friends call me cheap but

there is this zip line complex that I decided OK I'll take a day off I'll go to the zip line thing. 250 bucks and a zip line, if you don't know,

it's a wire rope that's often stretched across bodies of water or groups of trees. And, uh, and I had just a great time. I, I really, I really enjoyed that and I took it to the next level because I've been to zip lines in several other states since that. There's a real good one at Lake Tahoe when they open up Lake Tahoe, that one at the, uh, top of the gondola, Heavenly Dallas close and it, it kicks us. And

I'll tell you something else too,

OK. We go to a spiritual retreat every year and I've been doing that for close to 10 years. It's in San Juan, Batista, and since I like doing these zip lines, there's no better place to, to skydive than in Monterey. Now I know that's not for everybody, but for me, think about it. You're, you're, you're jumping out of an airplane at a, an altitude that no other parachute company does 18,000 feet. That's up high and you're looking at

Big Sur, Monterey, Pismo Beach and bonus what they do in this real nice airplane and I jumped handle. They take you out over the ocean. So when you're looking out and you're going to be scared if you ever do it, when you're looking out and you're getting ready to jump, you're looking at water, you're not looking at land and the wind takes you back in that. I've done that four different times and I brought other people with me and I've been with them for their first time and that's a riot. And,

uh,

and I've got friends now. I've got hundreds of friends that I rely on. I've got a girlfriend. We, we met about a year ago and she's an Al Anon. And I, I don't like admitting this, but I used to make fun of Al Anon. OK. I used to make fun when I was a little kid and I didn't realize why we always made fun of everybody else. You wanna know why? It's so I'll feel superior, so I'll feel better about myself. So my ego will be increased. And it's like, I don't know

big relationships anyway, we get them on good. I'm learning that her programs a little bit different than mine, but both rely on a higher power and we try and help other people. We use other principles of the program. Honesty, faith, hope. Uh, there's a bunch of them and I don't do it perfect. OK, but I'm here to tell you I'm real fortunate that I'm able to do some of the things that I get to do. For example, three years ago I bought a sports car. It's a convertible. That is

the reason I did that is that's the kind of car I learned to drive on. I learned in the 60s how to drive in an Austin Haley, but this car I decided to modify and so it's got increased horse marriage. I've got more horsepower than Indiana. It's ever been sold production. OK, Umm uh, I've I've increased the exhaust so it goes faster. It's got racing suspension and no less than fifty other major

modifications. I'm not talking about little tiny things. And I go to race tracks, OK, I get to go to race tracks and you think I'd be at Laguna Seca if I was still drinking? I've been there three times. I've been to UMM, Thunder Hill four times. I've been to AAA Auto Club going 135 miles an hour and I've raised cars on Las Vegas Motor Speedway and The way I Roll, I. It's not NASCAR, OK? I pick tracks that have a lot of turns in them because that's What

Car is good at. OK, on the straight away I can't keep up with BMWs and Corvettes, but in the corners, that's when I can pass them. And racing. If you're interested, it's real simple. When you're on the straight, it's put to the floor, OK And it's like made for Alcoholics because there's no speed limit, OK, You're going flat out. And so the last possible moment when you start to break, and I mean brake hard and then downship and then turn,

do those at the same time. If you try and break and turn at the same time, you're going to spin. And I've only done it once, but that could be kind of dangerous. So I, I tend to avoid that. And I, I, I, I love doing these things. I like working with newcomers. OK, I've worked with probably 30 different new people. I've taken some all the way through the steps and believe it or not, some have even stayed sober. But

you want to know why they don't? It's, it's in the most ignored part of a A. It's in the second sentence of how it works. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. When I was in MPI and I saw that, you know what? I thought, OK, time to stop lying. Time to stop stealing. And once again, I was exactly wrong. I had to be.

Honest with myself about whether or not I cross that invisible line into alcoholism. Because once I had, there's no more controlled drinking and there's only two alternatives total permanent absence or chronic alcoholism and all the penalties associated with it, namely jails, institutions, and death. And I had to be honest when it came to believe it in a higher power. And when it came to an inventory, was I fearless and thorough and was

honest with my sponsor when I when I did that fifth step and and who, who would I harm? Was that list complete? And did I do all the events? Because I gotta tell you, I've seen people do all their immense but two. And there's a big difference, a huge difference, a life threatening difference between the people who do it and those who leave. So now and 2nd completely giving myself to this simple program. There's lots of people that believe they just go into meetings is gonna do it.

Well, that don't work for me. OK, it might work for some and it's a good idea. I'm not saying eliminate meeting. I get to meet newcomers. I get to carry the message and and new people have a place to come. But if I didn't do these steps, if I didn't do these steps, it's not thinking about the steps. It's not talking about the steps. It's taking action. Only through action could I have that spiritual experience that resulted in the obsession to drink

being lifted and that spiritual malady going away. I'm almost out of time. I'm kind of an old guy, OK, And I've been sober a long time. So if you're new, it might have been a little bit difficult to relate to some of the stuff I've said. Well, I've got I've got a short summary and if you don't mind, I'm going to give it to you. Welcome to an illness that'll bring you to your knees. It'll make you drink some more

until you can't even breathe.

There's an answer if you want it, but we're not going to plea. Just follow us to the solution. We got just what you need. Thank you and good night.

Thank you, Glenn. Very good.

I would like to thank our readers, Judy.