Summerfest 44 in Eugene, OR

Ina, California,

I'm Wayne B I'm an alcoholic,

by God's grace, in the power of 12 steps and a fellowship in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've been sober since the 8th of November 1977. I'm pretty happy about that.

Which means I've had no booze, pills, powders, potions or lotions

that unnecessarily affect my emotions from that date to this. I do have a history of date in mind and mood altering women, but

I picked a sponsor that didn't like that so and I'm sure they would tell you the same of me. So we'll just be fair. I want to thank Joe for and the committee for inviting me to come spend this weekend with you. It's a beautiful thing. I love a with all my heart and soul. I do. And I want to thank Jason for picking me up the airport and driving me around. And

we rode down here. I rode with him from Portland as long as 10 years of my life and

but it went quick.

One thing Max for hosting me, guys asked me numerous times that there's anything you can do. I like that. Thank you, Max.

Anybody I missed Sonia, Thanks for your thanks. I love you. We're like connected. Your story sounds like mine only in female version. I I've heard three women that I've identified my life with. You're one of them. And for the part that I heard Carrie of your share. Thank you. I was out now hallway judging everybody and

just like some of you are going to judge me, but I'll find you and get you back. I am.

We've had two great speakers. You know,

if you're looking for a spiritual experience, you don't gotta look no further than your left or your right. We talk a lot about spiritual experiences, I think, and I've had many spiritual awakenings in my sobriety, but I was really baffled by that spiritual experience thing. But I believe we are men and women,

people

who aren't supposed to be here, whether you're AAL, Anon or whatever. And I think that the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous, the miracle of Zoom, the miracle of, of what we've been through, we're a part of history now. You and I are tethered to the history of Alcoholics Anonymous in this moment. This is a moment.

I mean, I'm 71 years old

and my moments are precious now and I look for them. And this is driving with Jason was a big moment.

Don't worry, he'll have his turn tomorrow. So

he'll lie though. So,

so I'm tasked with sharing the experience and I hope that if you relate, you'll get some strength and hope. And I know some of you probably won't identify with me. So, you know, don't blame your way out of a, A by not identifying with me. Just keep sticking around. There's going to be 6 or 8 speakers this week and going to be a lot of activities just keep coming. Hang in there. And I, I just want to say this before I get into it, there's a benefit to long term sobriety. I couldn't possibly know what I know from my experience

had I not stayed sober all these years. One day at a time. And that the power of that experience becomes a spiritual type of a knowledge. It's like accessing the power of humility.

And when I was able to access that power, not only did my life continue to change, but my mind began to change. And I accessed the power of humility when I talked to a newcomer

or they talk to me or I'm in a room like this. And I don't ever want to forget that because what Clancy always used to say was I'm, I'm here today, but I may not be with you tomorrow. He's not the only one who said it, but it's a true statement. We don't know, you know, Zoom. A lot of people got sober on Zoom during the Zoom era. And I don't mean to be a buzzkill,

but we don't hear about the ones who went out because they didn't have this, this leg of the three legged stool. And before I get into the business of my story, I just want to talk about that for a minute. I want, I want to talk about that three legged stool because we hear a lot about the 12 steps. And sometimes I think we hear people diminish the fellowship a little bit to, to raise up the idea of the the 12 steps. But it's a 3 legged stool that the old timers taught me about.

And the first leg of that stool is the fellowship, our entry into a A.

But it's only one leg and that stool can't stand. The second leg of that is the 12 steps.

The third leg of that is the unity, the unity of the fellowship and the seat. As Reverend Sam Shoemaker said, the seat

is described in the definition of a soul, the soul sickness that I have. That's important to know. So that three legged stool without the seat, which is better known as God as we understand him, that stool can't stand without the seat. And that's important to talk about. I think, I think it's been overlooked for quite some time now. And so I real, I focus with my sponsees today on that three legged stool and I want to make sure they get all three sides,

the recovery, the unity

and the service, the three legacies of Alcoholics Anonymous, because I think a lot of us drift away because we're not connected through service.

I've I've witnessed it myself in my own sobriety. So enough of that. One more thing

I used to I'm a big I'm a recovered big book thumper.

No, I'm a big book enthusiast,

which means I no longer hit people in the head with my book.

Interesting how our fellowship. I don't. I think that is being so long since I've been with you like this that my mind is is in a different place tonight. I mean, Joe was weeping at dinner.

You know, I didn't know Joe had issues health wise

and I came here with some health issues I'm not going to go into, but when he told me his I got better all of a sudden.

Has anybody else been dying really bad until they hear somebody else go?

I don't want you got so

you know what I mean, Joe. And so I'm taking care of the business. I'm taking care of medically and I'm and I'm, I'm getting better had several health issues and that's what happens, I guess the way I used to live. So I suppose I should become alcoholic. So, you know, in this book, when I came here at the age of 23, I was diagnosed at that I'd begun to get psychiatric diagnosis. So I want to get this out there before I tell my story because,

like Sonia, you might think I'm mentally ill because of our stories, because there's a lot of psychiatry in my story.

There's a lot of misdiagnosis in my story because of the lies I told.

I don't know how many of you studied the DSM 3.

Those that are laughing know exactly what I'm talking about. The DSM three is the manual that psychiatrists and psychologists use to diagnose you.

So I knew what looked to give, what thing to say to get a pill that I went. I'm not violating the tradition. I'm not going to talk about him. I just saying I didn't understand. I was alcoholic, so when I got here, I didn't know what alcoholism was. I saw my dad drink brown whiskey and act how he acted. I saw my mom drink tequila and I saw how she acted. So I'm not going to drink that stuff. And I was a peculiar kid.

Some people said retarded,

peculiar. I like that better.

I want to tell you about my first obsession because it alcoholism and the more the more the world evolves and and science keeps looking for an answer to this dilemma and they keep putting labels on this dilemma, the farther away we get from what's in this book, from our heritage, from our legacy. And I want to protect the legacy of Alcoholics Anonymous. I guess that that's my motive, I hope.

And you know, so, but so I got to become alcoholic first so that you won't think I'm just mentally ill. You'll think that, but I don't want you to think that.

Bill cleverly hid the simplicity of step one on page 44.

Here's all it means for me to be alcoholic

and I hope you don't mind me. I'm only going to read a couple things here because I know what this is about, right? But I want to read how I became an alcoholic because I see I didn't identify with the description of the real alcoholic AT23I hadn't changed my drinking. I'd never matter of fact, to this day I've never taken a drink in the morning. I have done not done 90% of what describes the description of real alcoholic at the age of 23. So I dismissed this out of countenance

and my sponsor, who appointed himself,

asked me to read the book. So I got to chapter 4. The title We Agnostics. I'm not. I'm a little Christian boy that went to church every Sunday. Lil Wayne. They nicknamed me Lil Wayne.

I heard someone hijacked that name and

and so when I read we Agnostics, I just did what many of us do. I thought I'm not agnostic with chapter 5. The problem with that is going to how it works before I'm convinced I'm an alcoholic means I'll probably half measure everything after that because I'm not convinced. I wasn't convinced that this level that I'm truly alcoholic because after all, I started getting diagnosed psychiatrically at the age of 9.

I was raised in an alcoholic home. Many of you understand that

Bill wrote in our literature that any child raised in an alcoholic home is bound to turn out to be more or less neurotic.

I'm on the Moore side, but riding with Jason made me feel better about myself,

so I want to become alcoholic real quick so I can dispense with that. And here it is. I finally went back and read that chapter because my sponsor said he doesn't mean you're agnostic if he means you feel and think like that while you believe in God, and that stunned me.

Now I'm going to put this in the first person if you don't mind, because that's important for me to relate to it, he wrote. Oops, wrong chapter. OK,

if when I honestly want to do I find I cannot quit drinking entirely. Man, that is not fair.

Now, I took the 20 questions test from John Hopkins.

Play along. How many of you have taken the 20 question test? In my opinion, that's the dumbest test I've ever seen. Now I'm going to tell you why I'm a forward reader, not forward thinker. I'm a forward reader. And so when I open up a new book, I go to the back of the book because if I don't like the ending, why read it? So I went to the bottom of that test and they put the quantification answers right at the bottom of the test. It says one if you answer yes to one.

There's 20 questions. If you answer one,

you might be alcoholic.

If you answer yes to two, you are probably alcoholic. If you answer yes to three or more, you are definitely alcoholic. And I knew right then and there they ain't getting 3.

I don't give a rip. What's on that test? My my dilemma is do I give him one or two because I don't want him to think I'm lying?

This test is even more difficult

if when I honestly want to do, I find I cannot quit drinking entirely. You know I can lie to you. I did. I can lie to anybody about my drinking. I never want to quit drinking, not once that I want to quit drinking. But that's only because deep inside I knew I couldn't. So why want to if you know you can't? And I didn't understand why I couldn't quit because I understand the science of ethanol alcohol.

The science of ethanol alcohol is that it's not an addictive substance by nature.

So that baffled me. Later I read in the big book where it said cunning, baffling. That was baffling to me. I didn't understand. But when I'm looking at that man in the mirror, I'm not a psychopath. That's this is not a public opinion poll, by the way.

I'm not a psychopath or a sociopath.

I got a conscience. And when I'm looking in that mirror after I've lied to everybody else, I cannot lie to that guy looking back at me and I knew I couldn't quit. That's one. Yes, I'm expecting 19 more. Or if when I'm drinking, do I have little control of the amount I take? This is getting tough

because I know, even though I know alcohol is not an addictive substance by nature, I know if I pick up a drink, I'm not going to predict what I did, what I'm going to do, and when I'm going to stop, if I'm going to stop. That is baffling.

That's two yeses. And then it goes on no more questions, which is startling. And then it says I am probably alcoholic.

That was close

probably,

and in my experience that I bet many of yours, most of us die between probably and definitely.

The task for us here is to get from probably to definitely, and I can only share my experience. I got to that definitely somewhere between step 1:00 and 9:00, somewhere between steps one and nine and hanging out in the fellowship, going to a lot of meetings, somewhere in that mix without my permission. I went from probably to definitely, and I'm here to report that had I not done those things, I don't think I would have got to definitely.

And I'd have been like four members of my family that all had sobriety in a A at one time. And all four died drunk too, by suicide.

That was baffling to me. They all had sobriety at one time in AA, and all four of them drank again and used drugs and died by suicide. Two of them. That baffled me. So just one more thing from the big book if you don't mind.

He hit it and how it works.

How many times do we hear how it works? Read. We hear it so many times we become oblivious to it sometimes, don't we?

It's time to check our phones

talk, right? I mean, it'll read how it works. There's got something else to be because

we get so used to hearing it and reading it. But you know what? One day it became apparent to me how important it was. So you're not going to see me on my phone or talking to my neighbor during how it works. I want to be an example for the new person because now I know because Bill wrote in the first paragraph was probably going to kill me. He said rarely have we seen a person fail who is thoroughly fought our path. Did you notice path isn't plural?

Think about that. I did.

Path ain't plural. There's about 300 journeys in here. One path

for Alcoholics Anonymous.

I was busy pluralizing this past with a bunch of Far Eastern outrageous insane ideology that I brought in here by myself.

And then he told me why my family members have died drunk. Those who do not recover. Our people who cannot or will not

completely give themselves this simple program.

The important part of that is, is am I, I cannot or am IA, will not, or am IA, combination of the two. Well, if you're asking me because it's a subjective thing, this is important. If you sponsor people, I believe the subjective nature of my mind is going to cut me a break at every turn. That's why I need a sponsor.

That's why I need friends that can be objective with me. I gave my sponsor permission to have his objectivity override my subjectivity. Because if you if you ask me how many meetings do I think I need? Well, it's one a month

subjectively speaking.

My sponsor says 1A day. Now, I don't know if you can count, but big discrepancy between one a month and one a day.

But because I trusted William Barney Barnett and later a series of other men who have been in my life as influencers mentors our speaker tomorrow night. I'm sure she's going to mention that we stand on the shoulders of giants.

When I heard that, I was 18 days sober.

And the comment behind that is so that we don't trip and fall over the bodies of those who could not or would not see our way of life.

And so one more thing,

and the other part of how it works that I listen to is Part B, where it says probably no human power could relieve me of my alcoholism. I misidentified what he meant by that until I dug into the history of why he was saying that. Because it goes something like this, and I'm not putting down anything outside A A. We're not supposed to give an opinion on outside issues. So I'm going to come from my own experience. The human powers of medicine,

psychiatry, psychology, sociology, theology

and pharmacology tried everything they could to relieve me of my alcoholism.

They could not,

but God couldn't would.

When I link AA inextricably with God, when I link that

He could, did and still does, relieve me of my alcoholism. One day at a time. That's how simple this is.

Now to my bad character.

I was a peculiar kid.

I'd like to tell you my first obsession was alcohol, but it wasn't.

I know it's a a don't get mad at me was Milk Bone dog biscuits.

You got to hang with me for a minute on this one.

I love them.

She, my dad had a hunting dog, a Beagle, and the dog was a good hunter, so he bought him treats. We didn't get treats, so I had a resentment. I didn't know that's what it was,

and so I started stealing, stealing his milk bones.

Now, my dad was a Teamster out of Chicago, and he worked for a guy named Jimmy Hoffa out of Michigan.

My dad was that guy and his buddies would come over and play poker on Friday night and I would go get a Milk Bone, put it in my mouth and walk right out into the poker room where those guys were playing. And they looked at me like I was peculiar.

It it was worth the beating I got

every time I got the beaten.

Pretty soon they hid him from me and I can't find him. I'm getting annoyed. I'm mad at the dog. It's the dogs fault,

right?

So I take a I'm a clever little kid. I didn't many most of us Alcoholics, I didn't say we're smart, we're just clever. And so I took up grocery shopping with my mom. I2 and 2 = 4. So I knew where she's buying them. So I took she thought it was cute that Lil Wayne wanted to go shopping with her. I'm a mama's boy, right? Well, I'm like short My mom would lose track of me. She'd be over to milk and eggs and she'd hear it over the loudspeaker. Would someone please get their kid out of the dog food aisle

because I'd be sitting there eating them right out-of-the-box.

Ain't making this up

so my mom wouldn't let me go shopping no more

and I can't stop thinking about him. I can't.

I'm watching cartoons and they got a commercial on for the family size.

Now, when you're a little kid, those are big and I asked my mom if I could have one. She said no,

so the cleverness kicked in.

I knew she had to give that dog a milk bone sooner or later. So my brother and sister are out playing out in the yard and I'm hiding behind a couch on Saturday

and I seized my dad's Beagle trotting out to the kitchen. When my mom called him, his ears were flopping. He looks at me behind the couch and

my opinion

goes out in the kitchen. I hear some rustling around. All of a sudden, here he comes. Now he's trotting with his head up and he's got this family sized milk bone dangling from his mouth and that dog does not know it hit him. I came out from behind that couch. I got on top of him, put him in a headlock and did everything I could get him to drop that milk bone. And he just wasn't letting. He wasn't letting go and letting. God, I'll tell you that right now.

And so I bit his ear

and I'm chewing on that ear and he finally let's go. How many of you remember that moment you think you've won that moment, that this is it? And I saw that bone dropping. And that's what I thought, that this, this mine. I reached out and grabbed that milk bone. And the reason he let it go is because he's biting me back. I have a scar here and I have a scar inside my eyebrow where he locked onto my face and he shook

the obsession through a milk bone right out of my body.

No sponsor,

no steps, no meetings, no commitments, no inventories. From that day to this, I've not had a milk bowl,

no kibbles and bits,

several quibbles and fits. We'll just do that.

You see, that's the obsession.

How many times did alcohol king alcohol shake the lifeout of Maine? And the consequences of my drinking became inconsequential and I didn't know why. So I just don't want to drink.

Fast forward to November 2nd, 1972. I've been back in Vietnam, my second tour of duty about a year. I'm living on Skid Row.

I just moved into a fancy dumpster behind Larry's Oasis.

Many of us don't get don't recover on Skid Row. There's a lot of people out there,

a lot of more and alcoholic. They're just asthmatic. They've got a broken spirit. Many of us in this room have a broken spirit. That's why they called this an allergy. The body obsession of mind. And that's where medicine stopped. It's important to know this. I think

where medicine stops is with the allergy and the obsession, Dr. Silkworth said so himself in this precious book, The only authority for Alcoholics Anonymous, he said. The only relief medicine has to suggest

his entire abstinence.

Well, if you're an alcoholic in my type, that's when my problem starts. Worse, there's a pair you know I love. I love Chuck. See, I, I'm going to tell you about that convention in a minute. But he talked about duality and I discovered that alcohol presented as a paradox of duality in my mind,

while it presented at first seemingly a solution to the problems in my mind. This self centeredness is this God awful self centeredness that I had. How many of us were born selfish and self-centered? I swear to God,

do you know every human being is born selfish and self-centered, but many of them grow out of it.

I grew into it,

didn't seem to have no way out, didn't understand that I'm just a dumb kid.

And as the ISM, this internal spiritual maladjustment began to grow in me and I began to feel more separate, different and alone,

and I began to get more weirder as time went by. I'm biting people in school. I know some of you didn't go to that extreme, but that's your yet.

Started eating pencils

8th grade. They gave me an IQ test. You want to play along for a minute? How many of you have taken the IQ test?

They administered that to me in 8th grade to try to get a beat on little Wayne's problem.

Now call me out if I'm wrong. If you score over 100, you're pretty smart. You score over 120. You're borderline genius.

You score over 150. There's an organization called Mensa that will come find you and recruit you. I scored at 57.

I didn't cheat.

I got diagnosed mentally retarded

and I got put in a retarded group home.

I don't want to get into all that because that's just believing. But you know what? When I drink, I'm not retarded.

When I drink I'm so good looking I can't stand it. I am hot.

I grow hair that ain't there.

I remember I met my first wife. I was in retarded class and please don't be offended by that. That's what they called it.

I was taken to the senior dance by a guy named Tom who looked out after me. During those four years. He protected me from the bullies because I needed to protect him back then, and he took me to senior dance. I don't know what they're doing out there. I've never been. They kept us from general population

and there's balloons everywhere and they're having this dance and I'm watching them and Tom says I'll be right back. And that scared me. He was leaving me.

I needed help then. I was, I was so frightened and insecure and inadequate. You see, I didn't know I had a broken spirit. I didn't know that I had a soul sickness already and didn't know it. And I'm sitting in church every Sunday. I don't understand it. It's written in this book in chapter 4. Who knew?

Tom comes back and he's walking. He's got a, he's got his hand tucked in his jacket. He pulls his hand out. He's got this red brown bottle with a red, white and blue label, said Budweiser. And he said, here, drink this down, it'll make you feel better. I didn't know I was a guzzler.

You know, an NA and California, they say picking up in a a we say bottoms up.

And I put that bottle and I guzzled it down, let out a big old belch and I said, Tom, that tastes terrible. Can I have a Pepsi Cola?

Tom said. That's OK, kid. Have another. You'll get used to it.

See, Tom to this very day is a friend of mine. He like his father's in politics in my hometown.

What he meant by that was his experience, his father, who was in politics, his whole basement was booze, Linewood booze. And he entertained a lot. And one night Tom got into his daddy's liquor and got liquored up, had to pee, thought he's in the bathroom. He was in his bedroom, thought he was standing over his stool. He was standing over open dresser drawer and he peed in his dresser and he said he almost went crazy trying to flush it.

His mom made him do his own laundry and he said I'll never do that again. And from his mouth to my ear, he's never done that again in all these years. That's what he meant when he said I'd get used to it. But you see, I'm not like Tom,

somewhere between 4:00 and 5:00 buzz risers, that 15 minutes that I think we all seek that 15 minutes of peace,

that 15 minutes where that effect produced at Silk Worth talked about took place in me, in my spirit. Somehow ethanol alcohol acted in an or in, in in an ordinary way. It it acted in a way it's not chemically indicated to do. It altered my perception of myself and reality.

Just say no isn't going to fly. And I didn't know that happened. That's the damn noble part. I didn't know that happened. All I know is I'm going to drink Budweiser soon.

And I looked on the dance floor. I'll never, I'll never forget this moment. It's a moment. I looked down at dance floor and I bawled. Me, a blue eyed blonde

dancing with some loser,

Tom says. Where are you going? I said right out there. Now he knows I've never danced or nothing in school. I don't even know I'm going to do.

Got up to her, heard someone say can I cut in? Stole those words. Can I cut in? She said yes. I found out later she recognized me from the special class so she was giving me a sympathy dancing. Come on girls, you know how you are.

She she was she was just trying to show me some compassion and then she started liking me and we stayed together. Her date, she dumped him and stayed with Lil Wayne. Found out later that night sex met two people. I didn't know that,

been having sex as I was 13. I thought I was good at it.

She complicated the entire process.

You know, when you're alone, you don't have performance anxiety. I just got to tell you,

she got pregnant,

we got married, and then I went to Vietnam.

That's the short version. And every drink I took, unbeknownst to me,

was for that 15 minutes.

And at some point, alcohol Budweiser turned on me

and I didn't understand that. I walked away from my family, my kids.

It was easier for me to live on the street. You see, it wasn't tough for me to live on the street.

I'm that guy that adjusts to any bottom I dig myself into, which is why so many people tried to help Wayne.

They came to my dumpster, brought me sandwiches. I love the 7th Day Adventists. They talked to me for a while.

The Mormons came. They all came trying to trying to give me to give up and give in.

And then on the night in November, on the night of Halloween 1972, my father visited my dumpster

and the last time I saw him was a violent experience and I heard a knock on my dumpster lid about 1:00 in the morning.

I was home

alone. Some of you women are picky.

And I lifted that lid up and there's my dad staring at me. And the last time I saw him, he had a gun in my face,

and I was expecting him to do what he said he would do next time he saw me.

But he had a different look in his face that I never saw before.

He didn't have that frightening, terrorizing look that I'd seen so many times. I had no idea he'd gone off and joined what they called a cult back then.

He didn't say he joined a he just asked me if I want to come home with him tonight and I looked around my little room. No thanks, Dad, I'm doing fine.

And some of you know, I was up here.

I just, you know, it's funny how you can accept terrible things but I can't accept good stuff sometimes. And he left and I just want to shorten the story up. After he left, I convinced myself he's going to the car to get the gun,

so I jumped out of that dumpster and began that walk of walks that everyone of us had made in our own way. Your walk might have started from that Cadillac he parked on the front porch.

Your walk to bottom might have started when your kids found you laying naked in your own stuff in the in the in the hall closet because that's where you passed out. Bottom is relative to the individual Location, location, location.

I began that walk and I ride to this place called Harvey's Restaurant in Moline, IL

Quitting drinking wasn't anywhere in my radar. It's Halloween night, usually this restaurant is packed to truck. It's a truck stop type little restaurant at the edge of East Moline, IL and I looked inside the windows. There's a little 8 old little 800 year old woman slowly wiping down a coffee bar. I sized her up. I knew I could work her for a drink

or a meal,

so I walked in that door. My odor got to her before I did. She drops that rag. She looks up and she throws me a smile

that took me off guard.

She walks up to me and she brings me a glass of water and a cup of coffee. She's What can I do for you sweetie? I was ready to work her. She's working me and I don't know it.

So I went into my tale of woe.

I told her about that alcoholic home I lived in. I told her about the trauma. I told her about being taken hostage at 9 and locked in a coal bin and tortured and raped by a man. I told her about the abuse. I told her things. I'm not going to tell you here tonight because it's not the right place, but I just to get something to eat. I was willing to tell her stuff I didn't want to tell my sponsor in the 5th step. Isn't that interesting? How dignity doesn't matter when you're in that position.

And

she, she's kind of surprised me,

found out she's an Al Anon.

She gave me a sandwich and told me I could stay out in the parking lot behind the restaurant till her till her husband Harvey shows up. Harvey was in a A

Harvey came the next morning. I don't know what I don't know. He's an AI. Shouldn't tell. She didn't tell me. She's an al Anon. She didn't tell me. She just worked me. You know how we are.

She offered me a sandwich. Come on,

I'll go anywhere for a sandwich, but don't ask me to go on a 12 step call at 2:00 AM, you know what I mean? It's like,

especially if I'm not hungry, it's.

I'm sure none of you are selfish like that.

Harvey comes in the next morning. He puts his hand out and he's like, I hear you need some help.

And he gave me the bum's handshake. There's a coin in it

and if you're a bum like me, they call you homeless now, but that's a bum. And I knew that coin wasn't currency. I know coins.

And after he got done trying to shake the drunk out of me, there's this brass coin in my hand with two as on it. And he says, turn it over. You know there

anything to humor him? I'm hungry

so I turned it over and had this prayer. God grant me something.

So I said what? And he says you take this coin tomorrow down to 410 16th St. about noon time there be some friends of mine there, You tell them, Harvey said. You show them that coin, they'll look out after you for a while. I heard him say money, food and shelter

and he said when you get there, it's in the cellar and you'll see a light bulb hanging on a cord. If that lights on, that means they're in there. Go on in

not telling a newcomer that that doesn't know he's a newcomer.

I went the next day, November 3, 1972. Got there a little before noon. Located the light bulb. It wasn't on. It was flickering.

Harvey didn't tell me what to do if it was flickering.

I'm out there like this on the sidewalk.

If you ever see somebody doing that, just if you dare grab your shoulders and just hold them.

And I left and got drunk because that light bulb wouldn't stop flickering. And I went and got drunk. And that night I remembered that they owe me now

and I went back there to get what I got coming. Food, cigarettes, and some pocket change. I got back there about 8:00 that night. Isn't that interesting? 8:00 that night on November 3rd. I found out later that group only had three meetings a week,

and if they hadn't been there that night, I'd had to wait three more days. There wouldn't have been a soul there if I went the next day or the day before

I got back there. They owe me. So I'm going in. Don't care about the light bulb now. I've got just enough Budweiser on board to not care about the light bulb. And I went through that basement doorway on a rush, failing to notice the door headers. 510 ish. I'm six, 3:00-ish. I ran into that doorknob, that door header at the eyebrow. The impact lifted me off of my feet.

I flat flat on my back and knocked the wind out of me and I slid into my first meeting of Alcoholics Mountain.

There was a round table inside that room with six or seven old men. Must have been talking about death and dying

and isolated right between two of them. And this old buzzer gets up out of his chair, looks over me and goes just like this.

Then he growled at me. Slide right in here, you big dummy.

We got a wrench to fit every nut that comes in the door. By the looks of you, it's going to have to be an adjustable wrench.

I didn't like him right away.

Then he picked me up off the deck and he's holding me up and he goes. My name's Barney and

I didn't ask. And then he says, and I'm an alcoholic. I thought, oh, you poor SOB. So I know from therapy that when someone self discloses to you, they're trying to seduce you into giving them something back.

So I gave him something back. I said, well, I'm ADD

and he says I'll bet you are.

And I said, you know what else I am? He said, what's that? I said I'm OCD. He said I'll bet you are. You know what else I think you might be? And he I was off guard. I, I thought I won,

so I said what's that? He says. I think you might be ODD and I know there is not a diagnosis in the DSM three of ODD,

so I said what's that? He said. You are very odd.

And then he says I'm gonna be your sponsor.

And my journey began

five years and five days. I went to meetings and raised my hand and gave a diagnosis.

I never once said I'm an alcoholic. I said I'm Wayne. I got ADD one. I'm narcissist personality disorder

wasn't borderline. It was borderline personality Munchausen syndrome, fat tissues disorder syndrome. I gave it to Nick, Clap, Keep coming back

And on November 8th, 1977, five years and five days later,

is it odd or is it God? A new guy came in.

I had three hours more so writing him

and I raised my hand for him and I said I'm waiting. I'm an alcoholic. I have not had a drink from that day to this day. Raise my hand. But see, that's only the beginning.

It's the very beginning is admitting Somewhere I got to go from admission to acceptance. And there's another paradox of duality,

that admission will make me feel better, but it's not acceptance. And that's another thing that happens between step one and step 9 is somewhere acceptance found me in the work I did and that was sufficient to get me going. And so I go along. I'm five years sober. My wife and I got back together again. We were we were the miracle couple of A&L Anon.

Came home about 1:00 in the morning. Caught my wife with my sponsee

and I didn't know what to do with that so I got my pistol

357 Sonia.

I polished my bullets

and something stopped me from shooting them.

I ran to my sponsor's trailer

and it's two in the morning now, and I'm knocking on his door of his trailer with the butt of my 357. And he looks out there, he sees me, then he sees the gun and he lets me in.

And I told him what I just saw.

And you know, these old timers, I think sometimes we give them a hard time. I think we do. But they have their moments too, don't they? And he was having a moment with me