Nexen Saturday Night meeting in Calgary, Alberta, Canada

And Kevin and Kate and a bunch of people from the primary purpose group in Calgary came down for our very first meeting. And since I moved, I was in the market for a new sponsor because of course, my sponsor was

Calgary. And I just wasn't able to see him anymore, you know, and all these people came down to our very first meeting and I heard Kevin share and his passion for the solution and the big book and all that stuff. They can realize that I found my new sponsor and I believe I asked him that very same day. I think it was the same day

and you know, and long before. He lives in Calgary and I don't, but I come here on a regular basis and we talk

quite a bit. So I'm not going to take up any more time. I'm pretty sure you'll you'll catch on to his passion for for the program and and the solution is this laid over the fake book. So without any further ado, here's Kevin

's

Hey everybody, my name is Kevin. I'm an alcoholic. I'm glad to be here. As you can see, I rushed in at the last minute. I apologize for that. I just. I couldn't find parking anywhere. I was praying fervently, driving around in circles downtown, like, God, please stop me from fucking going crazy because I'm

fucking kill someone right now. And I knew, like, you know, it might be OK, I'll get to the meeting and maybe they'll have picked another speaker because I was there late and that would have been awful. I would not have been, No, I'm just kidding. It would have been fine. I want to thank anyone who specifically came here to hear me tonight. You know, Brad came in from out of town and and

yeah, it's an honor. I was. So I'm recording this for a friend of mine, Clint,

who's up north and we were texting back and forth. He's working up north right now. And we were, we were talking, we were texting back and forth and he said, I really wanted to hear you. I really think I could identify with your story. You know that sitting alone in my apartment listening to Alice In Chains with a straight blade kind of shit. I'm like, that's thank you. That's my story. It's thank you. Thank you very much.

And

it was just funny. He just he just kind of nailed it. That's kind of what my my alcoholism looked like. That's kind of where it was. And it's certainly my life is certainly not like that anymore, Although I do still really like Alison James. I still think they're, you know, they're very talented band. Alice In Chains is not responsible for my alcoholism, right?

But what I told Clint and I hope will transpire tonight is that I will spend 10 minutes talking about the problem. I will spend about 50 minutes talking about the power of God,

OK, And talking about obviously the solution in the 12 steps from the program of action. All those things. One of the things that I, I learned, I have learned that I needed to learn is that all the things that I do in a, a going to meetings, yes, the 12 steps, yes, reading the big book, yes, working with newcomers, yes, they're all important. But the end result of all of those things is the solution. So you go into meetings doesn't get me sober. Working the 12 steps, it doesn't get me sober necessarily. You'll see. I know you're probably thinking like, what's he talking about?

The 12 steps don't get me sober. The 12 steps get me connected to the thing that gets me sober. And what gets me sober is the power of God. That's what Alcoholics Anonymous is. That's what we have to offer. OK. And I'm not afraid to use that word God. I am not a religious man by any means, but I will point out that it mentions the word God several times in our 12 steps. That is the foundation of our of our program starts right in Step 3.

God as we understand him several places in the steps, it talks about the power of God. So today I, I don't, I don't pull any punches on that. You know I don't. I don't.

I'm not afraid or ashamed to talk about

God. And if if you are, and I'm talking about God, every time I use that word God, you get a little like, you know, the book says, bristle with antagonism. And I understood that when I was new. I understood that I didn't come here with the power of God. Trust me. I didn't come here wanting anything other than to be let out of that apartment listening to Alice In Chains with a straight blade. It wasn't actually an apartment. It was actually a basement suite,

a series of basement suites. I got kicked out of many basements suites, right?

So ultimately all the things that I do in AA12 steps, getting involved in service work, all of those things are all in aid of me having this spiritual awakening in aid of me getting connected to this God, this power greater than myself that in we believe in Alcoholics Anonymous is the solution to alcoholism. I think our book is pretty clear about that. Now there's a lot of great, like other great things that I can do in my life and other,

other wonderful treatments and therapies and stuff like that that are fine. They're great. But what I needed to to do is to understand that these things were great in addition to a solid foundation in Alcoholics Anonymous, not instead of right. And that's what

that's what ultimately, ultimately worked for me and that's what ultimately changed

life.

So I will say that I was

born in Calgary. I'm an only child. I've got two fantastic parents to fantastic parents. To this day, my parents suffer from none of the symptoms of alcoholism whatsoever. My parents are heavy drinkers by the definition of the word or not heavy drinkers, but moderate drinkers, right? They're social drinkers by the definition of the word social drinker. My parents are that undoubtedly they can take it or they can leave it alone. They have no

problem with alcohol whatsoever. My parents will have a cocktail before dinner, maybe a glass of wine with dinner and that's it. And these, this is where I came from. This is my blood. And I do not identify with that type of drinking whatsoever.

I was out with my dad a while ago when we were at, we were at a hotel or, or whatever. And he, he had a bottle of rye that he had bought in his hotel room and he was mixing like a rye and coke. And the way my dad does that is he gets a glass and puts ice in it. He has a shot glass and he pours one out and that one ounce goes into the glass and he fills the rest of Diet Coke and he'll sit and drink that

drink and OK, that's cool. And then we went out to a restaurant. We went out to the restaurant,

server comes over and orders drinks and my dad says, yeah, I'll get a just a Diet Coke, please.

And I noticed that, right? I noticed that. And I said, dad, well, you're not gonna have a Ryan Coke here. He said, no, I don't really like the way Ryan Coke tastes in restaurants. You know, they use cheap rye and and the Diet Coke doesn't taste the same. I might have another one when I go back to my room but but no, I'm good with just Diet Coke for right now.

I thought, Dad, am I? Am I adopted

because that is so far from my realm of understanding of what drinking looks like. But that's who I come from. That's who I come from. They were great people. There's certainly

nothing, you know, I didn't grow up in an alcoholic home or, or anything like that.

And I don't know if I was born an alcoholic, but I will tell you that when I took my first drink,

an alcoholic was born.

When I was 12 years old, I had an opportunity to get drunk for my first time. I knew immediately I did not drink like a normal 12 year old.

I stole that joke. I stole that joke from another speaker. It's a great one.

Yeah, man, I it was, it was great. The first time I ever got drunk was with my best friend Adam and his older brothers and all his older brothers friends. Remember how it was when you were a kid and you got to hang out with the older kids? You're hanging out partying with the older kids

and man, they were like they were, they were 16. They had like drivers licenses and some of them were even older and could like get alcohol. So I'm 12 years old and we're going out to this farm party. OK, and it was I'll, I'll never ever forget this. You know, I had somebody handed me a 2 liter of Roqueberry wine cooler. Okay, remember anybody remember those remember rocking Berry wine coolers And that was it. I could drink as much of that as I wanted and, and

I certainly had no problem with that.

And I drank that. And it was, we were driving out to this farm party and we were in, I was in the back of a pickup truck, but I was like laying down in the flatbed of a pickup truck on a beautiful summer night looking up at the stars. You get anybody here ever done that before? That's magical, isn't it? At 12 years old, lit up on this rockeberry wine cooler for the first time. It was magical. And to date myself a little bit at that time, there was music coming out of the cab that I'd never heard before.

I'd never heard music like that. A band named Metallica had just released a song called Enter Sandman, right? And it's blasting out of the cab, Man. We were off to Never Neverland, you know? And we got to that party. And I immediately I started doing a bunch of things that were going to follow me throughout the rest of my dream career. I started stealing drinks from people. I started trying to fight people. I started trying to hit on girls. I started trying to, I spill the drinks all over myself.

I, you know, I was just crazy and I couldn't get enough. I couldn't get enough. As soon as I had that rock, that wine killer was done. I think I threw it over the side of the pickup truck before we even got to the party. And I just started doing everything I could to get as much alcohol in me. I didn't understand it at the time. I didn't know this. I wouldn't know this for years until I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. Now I understand I triggered physical allergy. That's what Doctor Silkworth talks about.

OK, in the chapter The Doctor's Opinion, I suffer from a physical allergy manifest itself in the phenomenon of craving for more alcohol. Once I put alcohol into my body,

I have no control over the amount that I'm going to take. OK, I have an addictive craving for alcohol. The more alcohol I put in my body, the more alcohol I want,

right? It never, it's never satiated, which explains to me why when I was at a bar, you know, drinking later in my life at 2:00 when they put the ugly lights on and it was last call and they're sending everybody home. Everybody's like, where are we going? And I'm trying to figure out how can I get more alcohol because everyone else has had their six or seven drinks and they're good. I've had 16 drinks. And that allergy is eating me alive at that moment. And I will do anything for more alcohol,

which is why, you know, raise your hand if you ever bought off sales after the bar closed. Yeah, Only Alcoholics have a need for off sales after the bar closes, right? I would do anything. I I was that guy at 5:00 AM walking around the party while everybody else has passed out, trying to get people to stay up and drink with me, walking around drinking people's bottom beers, Right. And tipping one back. And what would happen eventually?

These are you are. These are my people.

I'm in the right room. If you've never tipped a beer bottle back and gotten a cigarette in the mouth, I don't know what to tell you. That's good living right there.

Anyway, so you know, so I was at that party and 12 years old and whatever and I woke up the next morning and I, I want you guys know, I suffered no consequences from that whatsoever. 0 consequences. And, and I had found what I felt at that time was my solution to life. OK. Now the other thing that we talked about, Naye, is the spiritual sickness,

the spiritual malady. Now, I didn't know at 12 years old that I was suffering from a spiritual malady. It's not like I was walking around on the playground one day and they said, Kevin, how you feeling like? Well, I'm

I'm feeling a little spiritually sick today. I didn't know that's what it was, but I knew that whatever it was,

yeah. It's like I didn't even know how bad I was feeling until I knew how good I could feel. My buddy Danny talks about the first time I drank. I experienced feelings that I did not know were available to me. I felt a joy and a peace and a freedom and all the stuff that it talks about we aspire to in a a. But I had just found it through Rockingberry wine cooler and bunch of stolen beers and some vodka and some Paralyzer and you know, and I made a decision right then and there that I was going to

drink as much as as I possibly could as often as I could.

Why wouldn't I? Because I suffered 0 consequences from that. There was number downside. It was all plus OK. I was like, my life now is just better with alcohol in it. I will be a better human being. I will be more effective in all that stuff drinking.

And I made a decision at 12 years old and I was going to start drinking as much as possible. And I was, I told you my parents are normal drinkers, but they had, you know, an extensive liquor cabinet and I was able to for years. I mean, that's that's how it was. I told you guys I was an only child so I had no siblings to worry about.

I could totally dodge and lie to my parents and all that shit and I could steal as much alcohol as I wanted. I had older friends that would bootleg for me and by the time I was 14 years old I was drinking daily. I had a routine every morning I would,

I'd go to the liquor cabinet, I'd steal as much alcohol as I could. I would drink vodka and amaretto and Drambuie and, you know, and then trying to manage the levels of all the bottles so that it wouldn't be too noticeable, right. And I'm drinking Glenfiddich, Scotch and, and all that, all that stuff. And then around that same time I discovered drugs,

I discovered all different types of drugs. And, and one of the things I would do is go to my parents medicine cabinet then and find whatever pills said do not take with alcohol may cause drowsiness. And I would take ten of them and wash it down with vodka and go to school. That's by the time I was 14, that's what my life looked like. And by the time I was 16, I was using

drugs much more extensively. I want you to know. I know that we have a single miss of purpose here, but I want you to know

definitively that I used drugs alcoholically, so I'll talk about it here. That's a joke, guys. Come on.

And

that was it. And I at that time, I was fully functional. I was fully functional. I was able to I was really functional. I was highly functional. I, I was, I had, you know, when I graduated high school, I was

had, I was like that second or third runner up to being valedictorian of my high school class. I was a student president of my high school class. I was in the school play. We did Greece that year and I was Danny Zuko

for anybody who knows Greece, if you can believe that. I had a lot more hair then

what? Oh, I was a peer supporter. So I was like a peer counselor, right? Which was funny because people come to me oftentimes and sit in like a little peer counseling room. We talk to them all about their drinking and their drug problems and they get them connected to ADAC and, and all that shit. And I was drunk most of the time. I was, you know, under the influence of people that I was counseling and doing all that stuff at her job at Zellers at the time,

you know, in the warehouse or whatever. And, and I had a relationship. I had a girlfriend and all that stuff. On the outside, everything looked good. I was able to maintain my life and a lot of us get here, you know, with some experience of what that looks like. I was able to maintain things on the outside, inside every day, every night in my life. I was down in the basement listening to Alice In Chains with a straight blade. OK,

that's what that's what it was down in. At that time. It was my parents basement. For most of us, what happens is we cross over a line from functional alcoholism

into complete chaos.

And for me that happened. Three things happened kind of simultaneously that that really

took,

took a toll on me and, and I, I,

I was not in control anymore. And what happened to me is I graduated high school

and I went away to university for the first time. So for the first time, I was no longer under their guidance or restriction of my parents.

The second thing is that that relationship that I had been ended and I had a broken heart.

Everybody right now. And

the the third thing is that I turned 18.

So all of that stuff that I just talked about happened before I was even legally old enough to drink when I turned 18. And the IT was like a complete revolutionary thought in my mind that I was now able to go into any bar, any liquor store whenever I wanted and buy as much alcohol and booze as I could possibly get whenever I wanted. I want you to know my life changed,

OK, and not for the better. And it was. Things got very sick very quickly. I was living in Latch Bridge at the time.

I was living in residence, which are underground and affectionately known as the dungeons at the University of Lethbridge. And it was, it was. I remember being as physically sick as I've ever been in my life. Sitting in those residences. I started to experience hangovers that were so bad and I started to go through all the things that that Alcoholics go through.

Not usually at age 18, but I started to get, I started to get the shakes in the morning.

I started to go through mild forms of delirium tremens. I started to hallucinate when I was drunk and I started to hallucinate when I was coming down. I remember a couple of very, very, very, very nightmare episodes of of that kind of thing. And I started to,

I moved out of I anyway, I started to get wine sores. I don't know if you know what wine sores are, but you start to get like scabs and, and because the wine, the alcohol is trying to come out and it can't come out, it can't be processed any of the waste. So it starts to come out your skin

and that's, that's started having me like early on means my body was shutting down. Anyway, so

I, I got a call from a friend in Medicine Hat. Now, I've been a guitar player for a long time and I've known these guys and I was a musician and they had just signed a record deal and their bass player just quit. And the call I got on the phone, I'm sitting in the dungeons, University of Lethbridge. And I don't know how I'm going to get through this semester. And my parents are still like paying for this semester. OK? Like my parents have no idea any of this shit is going on. And so he calls and says, would you like to

quit university and come join our punk rock band and go on tour across Canada

with us

fully paid for by the record company.

And I said, yeah, sure, that would be OK. So that's what I did. It was no big deal. I that, that level of music I I equated to, you know, if, if NHL is like real stardom, I was playing like AA, OK, AA music, you know what I mean? And and that was it. We went on tour for a long time and, and I discovered an alcoholic, three favorite words, free liquor tab, bad drinks for free man. And it got real nasty.

And real sick and real fucked up. I mean, that's all I can really remember. I I don't want to belabor it. I think I'm talking too long about my what happened anyway,

all I'll say is I got kicked out of that band and I didn't get kicked out of that band for drinking and I didn't get kicked out of that band for not being a talented musician. I didn't get kicked out of that band because they didn't like me. I got kicked out of that band because I belligerently refused over and over and over to stop drinking and driving. I belligerently refused. They said, Kevin, we really, we need you to either get sober or not drive. We don't care what you do. Just stop driving because

you're in kind of the public spotlight and you're gonna fucking, you're gonna run over a kid or you're gonna get a car accident and you're gonna be drunk. And we don't want that kind of exposure in our band.

And I would say, yeah, guys, no, no, never again, never again. Some. I don't know what's wrong with me. I think I suffer from another form of the allergy that the more I drink, the more I want to drive. You know, I'm just a fucking asshole. I am just a selfish, self-centered

Dick. And it got really like Degrassi Junior high style. Like people would try to have these big interventions about me drinking and driving and try to take my keys, or there'd be times where people would take my shoes away so that I wouldn't drink and drive. And I can remember many times

driving home in the winter in sock feed because fuck you, I'm driving my car tonight and the more I drank. And so eventually that band just said you're done. And we're, we're parting ways and

I don't know a lot of it truthfully, a lot of it is a blur. I tried to go to you university and college and do some of that shit. You know, the truth is I really, I really started, I went to my first a, a meeting when I was no, no, no, I went to my first NA meeting when I was 17. And around that time

I, I around the time that I got kicked out of that band and, and left the university or couldn't, I got kicked out of college or whatever. I don't even really remember what happened. I, I just know that I went to my first AA meeting when I was 18 in Medicine Hat

and then I was not welcome at my parents house anymore and I was going to try to get into this treatment center. And so I went to Regina around that time. I, I, I knew that I, I like, I knew I had a problem like I, it was, it was evident and I knew I was getting sick and I knew I was going to probably die.

Hi there by suicide or car accident or something was going to happen. I knew it was bad and I knew that I was hurting everyone in my life and I knew all that shit. And so I started to go to treatment centers. I did that for a long time. It doesn't mean I started to accept this solution whatsoever. It doesn't mean I started to accept Alcoholics Anonymous or the power of God at all. It just means that I went to a lot of treatment centers. OK. And, and that's what it was. I would go to treatment Center for a little while. It's long enough to get the heat off. You know, I love,

and I say it all the time, we got just healthy enough to have a good long relapse. You know, that's what I would go to treatment Centers for some exercise and you know, I got, you know, some good food and, and, you know, there's a lot of treatment centers around that are not a A based. And we get to do all kinds of like volleyball therapy and video game therapy and, and all I remember this one treatment center I went to that they had a feelings board. And every morning we'd have to get up and go in front of the group and

big feelings bored with like all the different feelings that you could have. And you'd have your little thing and you'd go up and put, put the feeling on. And then, and then what was even cooler is you got to hold everybody hostage for a while while you explained to them why you were feeling that way, right? You know fucking what? A bunch of fucking bullshit.

Not shit. I thought that that was, you know, I don't know, man. What I want to talk about really now is

that's what started to happen and I started to go to Alcoholics Anonymous and I was in Alcoholics Anonymous and I was around Alcoholics Anonymous and I had no idea what Alcoholics Anonymous was.

None. And I do not think, man, I, I, I don't know, sometimes I wonder, like, was it just that I couldn't hear it because I was not ready? Or is it that we don't actually do a very good job in Alcoholics Anonymous? I've explained it to newcomers what Alcoholics Anonymous really is really. And we let people kind of

figure it out for themselves kind of or

die.

Because I want you guys to know, man, I like there was a period in my life when I was like 2122 years old. So like I said, I went to my first meeting when I was 17. I had my last drink when I was 22. And between that time and that five years, I relapsed 7 times. And that was probably the hardest, most difficult, lowest, probably highest risk of suicide time in my life.

Do you guys know that more Alcoholics commit suicide sober than they do when they're drunk?

Because an alcoholic of my type, you take alcohol away. Alcohol is not my problem. Alcoholism is my problem. You take alcohol away from me. Alcohol is my solution to my living problem. The problem is when I'm sober, I can't stand the way that I feel. I can't stand it because of that spiritual sickness. And the spiritual sickness gets so bad that I got to pick up a drink.

And I pick up that drink and it kicks in that physical allergy. The physical allergy takes off and the drinking becomes so bad. My life gets so fucked up that I got to get sober again.

I get sober and I swear off that's it. I'm done. I'm never going to drink like that again. I promise. This time I'm mean and I went to treatment and I did the volleyball therapy and everything's going to be fine.

And without any type of spiritual solution.

Eventually,

nine days later, 19 days later,

nine months later,

the fucking spiritual sickness gets so bad and so painful and so fucked up. And I'm so crazy and angry and frustrated and restless and irritable and discontent and all the stuff that it talks about, terror, bewilderment, frustration and despair, The four horsemen of alcoholism that it talks about in the chapter of Vision for You. It gets so bad

that I got a drink again.

I have to drink

in order to preserve my sanity. And this cycle is repeated over and over, and unless the alcoholic has a complete psychic change, there is very little chance of, of his recovery. And that's really it. So I want you guys to know I was around a, a man. I wanted it, I really did. But I sometimes wonder if we don't do a very good job of really grabbing newcomers and sitting them down and explaining to them exactly what Alcoholics Anonymous is.

Because it isn't. 90 meetings, 90 days or we'll restore your misery.

That is not alcoholic synonymous. And I will I say that without reservation. Alcoholics Anonymous is those 12 steps up there,

12 spiritual axons that I can take towards creating what it talks about in step 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, I take the 12 steps. I have that spiritual awakening.

The next thing I do, I got to go take it to other people. I got to go carry that message to other people,

right? And these are the things that we do that create this relationship with God today that we have. There was a time in my life when I was in Alcoholics Anonymous where I was going to five AA meetings a day, right? I was going to the 7:00 AM at Parkdale. I don't know if that's still there. I would go to the then there was a 9:30 at Parkdale. I don't know if that's still there. Then I would go to the Nooner at Glenmore.

I'm pretty sure that's still there. I would go to the 1:30 at Garnet

and I'm pretty sure that's still there. I would go home and sleep for a couple hours.

I would get up and I would go to the 8:30 at Glenmore and I'm pretty sure that's still there,

and I would go home and I would stay awake all night.

Fucking insane, fucking crazy, restless, irritable and discontent in ways that I can't explain, that people, probably only people in the stream understand. Living through depression and anxiety and fear and anger all night long until I could just barely get on a bus. I'm doing that on the bus, by the way. All those five meetings all day long on the bus. That's what I was doing. I was not employed, was unemployable. There were one of these

meetings a day thinking this is a A

and I would go into a A meetings and I'd put on my AA face.

People would say, how you doing Kev? Oh fantastic,

so happy to be sober. I can barely stand it.

And I would leave that meeting and I would go home and I'd take off my a a face. And what would happen?

I'd want to fucking kill myself again

thinking this is sobriety, this is, is this recovery? Is this what the old timers mean when they talk about it keeps getting better

'cause this is not getting better.

And

I guess what happened is, you know, ultimately I, I surrendered

again after another relapse where I, I had ended up.

Homeless and

I, I called a treatment center again, a place called 1835 House, and I had already been there, so I called there a second time to see if I could get back in the 1835 House. And I went in and I remember,

I remember calling my sponsor a guy named David and I said David, you know, I just, I drank again and I can't figure out, I don't know. I don't know why. Like I,

you know, I, I told myself, I went out. I was going out with these guys and I told myself, I knew that they were drinking, but I told myself I wasn't going to drink that night. I am not going to drink tonight. OK, that's it. I've been around AI got like four months sober right now. I, I had a job. I'm doing OK, I'm going out with these guys. I'm not going to drink. I'm not going to drink tonight. And I went out and I drank and I was gone for four days

and spent all my rent money, blew everything.

You know, it happened again. And this is like I've been around a, a multiple times, going to those five meetings a day. I've been in and out of multiple treatment centers. I've lived in psych wards and hospitals. You know, I've, I've been like it. Like it was.

And yeah, I drank again. And that's what, you know, we talked about the insanity of alcoholism, OK? The insanity of alcoholism is not the crazy fucked up shit that I do when I drink. The insanity of alcoholism is that after all of that,

even though I had sworn off and said I'm never going to drink again, the insanity of alcoholism or what we call the mental obsession is that at some point without spiritual help, I am going to have a thought at some moment, suddenly

that's what the book says. Suddenly the thought will come. My real problem is an alcoholic is not alcohol. My real problem is that spiritual sickness that that fuels this thought that there is I, that I don't have to feel this sick, that there is a solution in that bottle and I'm just going to take a little bit of it and I'm going to feel OK and it's going to be fine. And that's what I did again after all those times in May, after all those promises I had made, after all those treatment centers,

I said, I'm not going to drink tonight. I'm not going to drink. And I went out and I drank four days later, destroyed everything on the phone, sobbing with my sponsor again saying, David, I said I wasn't going to drink. And I drank. And I don't understand what's going on. I don't know why. And he said after

I remember David, David, I'm, I just, David and I are so close. I just did another like of my own 5th step. I just did another one. I did it with David. You know who I'm talking about, Dave. Yeah, David M And I said, I don't understand. And he said, Kevin, after all this time, you just don't get it. You just don't get it. People like you. And I don't have the power to say I'm not going to drink and have that mean anything.

Our defense has to come from a higher power.

Our defense has to come from God. Kevin, you and I don't have the power to say I'm not going to drink and have that mean anything.

And I think for the first time I

I heard that I got it. I understood.

I just remember that being like one piece, one very important piece of information that I needed to get. So I go to 1835 house and I was fucking insane again, fucking insane. If they would have, if they would have held a vote about who was going to relapse as soon as they hit the street out of 1835, they would have raised their hands unanimously that Kevin was was going to relapse. Like I was out of my mind crazy.

I had the

social graces of an adult. I had the the skills of an adult. I looked like an adult at the intermittent beck and call of a four year old's emotions. That's what I, you know, I guess a 12 year old, you say once you start drinking is when you, you, you know, stop growing emotionally. I was just an absolute child. I would take two steps and laugh and I would take two steps and cry.

Just fucking insane. They said. Kim, what do you want to get out of your recovery this time? Now, I'd already been there, right? I lived there at another time for six months, Six months, I lived there. I was loaded 2 weeks later.

OK. And it's not that I hadn't been around the deal, I just had never actually taken all twelve of those steps. It's a funny thing. It's the only thing I never really tried in a A. I'd done every other fucking thing there was to do in a A except do the 12 steps and have a spiritual experience of God.

I've never done that. I've never tried it.

So anyway, I'm in the house. I'm in 1835 and said, what do you want to get out of your recovery? I said I want to be able to feel the same emotion for longer than 5 minutes, right? That's it. Because I was like, I was an absolute emotional roller coaster. By the way, I remember this when I moved back into the house,

the counselor said, Kevin, we want, you know, the counselors got together and we voted to let you back in the 1835. I said OK, and they said we want you to know the vote among the councillors was not unanimous

because I was I was crazy. I was a crazy and and I guess they just looked at like, you know, how willing is this guy? How willing is this guy going to be? My problem was is that I was smart. That's a problem that is a a grave detriment to you. If you were here and you are new and you are smart,

you're gonna have a tough time. I'm sorry for you, 'cause I suffered from intelligence for a long time in a a, a long time. People used to say to me, Kevin, you know, you need, you need to get stupid.

And I think, why don't you fucking get stupid? Fuck you.

And I understand now when people say, you know, no one was ever too dumb to understand the program of Alcoholics on us, but there's a lot of people who want to think their way right through it. There's a lot of people who are too smart to ever get sober. And that's exactly right. And they're exactly right. I tried to think my way. I tried to intellectualize my way through AAI felt like if I just studied that the stuff enough I really like read through the books and learned what to say and learned how to present

properly in a a that when the final exam came, I would ace the exam. Well, there's no exam. There's there's there's a pass fail question at some point when suddenly you get a thought that says, hey tonight, let's just go out and have 6 beers no problem. That's a pass fail exam. And I continue to fail that exam over and over and over.

So what really happened ultimately is that I I started to get connected to Alcoholics Anonymous

a little bit more.

And guys like David were, were instrumental. But what really ultimately fundamentally changed my life forever

was a big book study with a guy named Cowboy Ray. See, Cowboy Ray. Does anybody here remember Cowboy Ray? Anybody here know Cowboy Ray? Nobody knows Cowboy Ray. Yeah,

that's really sad. I can't believe that you used to ask that question. Every hand in the room would go up. Isn't that crazy? Cowboy Ray was a guy who started doing big book studies in the city of Calgary before anybody knew what a big book study was. Because Cowboy Ray had met a couple other felons who changed my life. Couple guys named Joe and Charlie. Anybody here know who Joe and Charlie are? OK, well, there's a few more hands. That's crazy. Those guys fundamentally changed my life because they they taught me this

book. They taught me that this book is Alcoholics Anonymous. The the the program contained within this book is perfection. This is the perfect program of Alcoholics Anonymous and what I can do as an A member of a a is aspire towards the program dictated in this book. This book is a a guide to help take me through those 12 steps.

I go through those 12 steps, I have a spiritual experience of God.

And then immediately I got to go start working with newcomers. I got to find someone to be of service, of service to. So that's what happened is I started to attend this Cowboy Ray big book study and I did multiple studies with Cowboy Ray and I started studying the book Alcoholics Anonymous extensively. And then one of the most powerful things that ever happened to me in my recovery. You want to know what changed my recovery more than anything else? You know, what was the part that I was completely missing for years? That whole time

that I was going around A5 meetings a day, What was I doing? I was taking,

you know what changed my life and Alcoholics Anonymous was the 2nd that I had an opportunity to start giving back to a, a see, that's where change comes from. Change comes when I stop being a fucking user of people, places and things, including Alcoholics Anonymous. Every time I came to AAI, came here to take something from you, to get something from you and when I could change and start to see, hey, you know, I've been around a little bit now. I've had this experience now.

Get to fucking work because I have a debt to pay to Alcoholics Anonymous. I owe it. It's not optional. I owe it to Alcoholics Anonymous every day. Every day for the life that I have. Everything that I have is given to me by the power of God and nothing else. Everything. And I owe it back. See, the book says that we have a new employer being all powerful. He will provide what we need if I stay close to Him