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Source: DICOBE-00009 – David A – STEP 4,5,6 AND 7.mp3 File: dicobe-00009-david-a-step-456-and-7.mp3 Duration: 00:59:42
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And only because of God's grace is America Alcoholics Anonymous, I have not found it necessary to, nor have I taken a drink of an alcoholic nature since April 20, 1967, and for this I am so thankful. Robert met my wife, I imagine, where she works, but she's not soft-spoken, I'll tell you. And I could tell stories from now until doomsday about her, but she's a great gal, and I'm very, very thankful that Grace married me, but above all, I'm very thankful that she stayed.
And I asked her one time, after I was sober for a while, I said, why'd she stay? She said, well, I just want to see if you really mean it. And I said, thank you. Last week, while we came through the first three steps of the recovery program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and this brings us now to starting in on steps four, and we'll go through five, six, and seven, I imagine, if we don't get sidetracked.
We hear a lot about step four in Alcoholics Anonymous, as we do five. A lot of times somebody comes to AA or Alcoholics, and then they disappear, and then somebody says, have you seen so-and-so? Well, they're drunk. And somebody says, well, I wonder why they got drunk. And somebody says, well, they didn't take their fourth step. I don't know about anybody in here, the only time I ever got drunk is when I drank alcohol.
And that's the reason that monkey got drunk, because he drank alcohol. And all these steps are designed for us not to go back to drinking. And alcoholics who go back to drinking, evidently, it's evident that whatever it is in their life at that time. And so step four made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. And again, now we come to a step that requires something that I don't believe that any of us have, and that is courage.
Now, we have a lot of false courage, but I don't believe we have courage. Because if that be the case, then all we have to do, then, is look at that serenity prayer, and it says, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change things I can. And then God's got to give us the kind of courage to change the things we can. And the thing that we have to change in Alcoholics Anonymous, I believe, if we're going to stay sober, is allow the program to change us, and not try to run our own life our own way, or to remove self from self.
And one of the chief reasons for drinking was to escape from ourselves. We were afraid of our thoughts. God, what did I do again? And we knew that we could escape from them through alcohol. But the problem is, we couldn't stay totally drunk all the time. We had to come to someplace, somewhere. That's one thing about a drunk, if he's missing, he'll surface, don't worry about it. He'll surface someplace, somewhere.
We were afraid to face facts, because we were afraid to look at the truth. We were afraid that something bad was going to happen to us, and we didn't realize something bad was already happening to us, you know. And, you know, you hear it all the time, working with drunks, for God's sake, don't sow anything that'll hurt him. Everything to hurt the drunks already happened to him, before he comes to AA.
And we were afraid to face facts. We were afraid, some of us were afraid we were going to lose our jobs. Some of us were afraid, you know, of our families, afraid they were going to leave us. Some were afraid they weren't going to leave us. Afraid of responsibility. There is an alcoholic, I believe, that does not want to be responsible for you. But you see, we didn't live in a vacuum. We heard what people were telling us.
We heard what people were saying when they were talking about us. They're sorry, they're no good, they're drunk. I wish I would have drowned him. I wish I would have hung him. I wish I would have poisoned him and shot him, you know. For God's sake, I wish I would have divorced him. I wish I never had married him. I wish you never were born. And we used to hear these things, and after a while we began to believe it, because we don't live in a vacuum.
And so, the easy way out, and we didn't want to foul up again. And if there's one thing about an alcoholic, when he gets sober, an alcoholic synonymous, one fear, you know, that we are afraid that we're going to louse it up again. And so, it isn't a question that we don't want to be responsible, we just don't want to mess up and be criticized. And this is the great thing about alcoholic synonyms. In AA, that ours are basically just suggesting.
Sharing our own experience of what it used to be like, what happened, what it's like now. And in AA, we don't holler and threaten the drunk. We don't need to.
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Because we've got two things that'll threaten us.
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Ourselves and our own inability to accept the program, and then alcohol is the final eliminator. And we're afraid to think about those things. And if we've fortified ourselves by taking the major hurdles that are embodied in the first three steps, we'll find the time now comes to actually do something definite about our problems. Now, up to now, all we are just not drinking. We haven't done anything about self.
We still got us with us. We still have resentments, we still have fear, we still have our own innate selfishness, our own innate dishonesty. And above all, we still are real hesitant. About sitting down with another human being and telling them everything about it. Because you see, in this step, we're going to have to put down and write down and tell our own selves how darn phony we've been all these years.
And then in the next step, we're going to have to go tell somebody how darn phony we've been all these years. And so now we're going to have to actually do something about our problem, because if we're not willing to do something about our problem, and particularly what? Resentment, selfishness, and dishonesty, and fear above all. And then we're going to have to be willing to communicate with another human being, either on a sponsorship level or eyeball to eyeball level, but particularly with other alcoholics.
And when we get into this inventory, what are we going to find? Well, the first thing we're going to find that we have been dishonest. We've been dishonest with ourselves. We've been dishonest with the point of fact that no, I'm not really that bad, and that, you know, the time will come where I'll straighten up and I'll get sober and I'll stay sober, or I'll drink like a man, or I'll drink like a gentleman, or I'll drink like a lady.
And so we've not only as a result of being dishonest with ourselves, we've been dishonest with everything about us and other people. We have lied to our own selves. We've lied to ourselves in every respect, and consequently, we lied to others. We cheated our own selves and we've broken hearts. We've stolen from the people who love us the most the right to have a good night's sleep, the right not to jump up out of the bed at two o'clock in the morning, one to worry when the doorbell rang or the phone rang.
Is it the sheriff? Is it the DA? Is it the undertaker? Is it the coroner? Is it the drunk? Is the drunk drunk? Who's the drunk with? How many are with him? Where has he been? What's he want? Is he violent? Is he passed out? We've brought people a peace of mind and serenity when the mailman comes and there's a certified letter once again. And there's many, many grandmas and many mamas running around with them birthstones and, you know, grandmas' rings with the stones out of them where the drunk's got her to hock them to get him out of jail or to pick up a hot check or two or to get him out of a treatment facility or in one.
And if the drunk could have gotten a hold of the gold itself, he'd have done melted that and hocked that long ago, you know. And so we have robbed the people and cheated the people who love us the most the right to be comfortable. And they're the ones that brought us into this world hoping against hope sometimes. Maybe it's not true. Now we have the opportunity to repay that. But we're not here for that reason alone.
This all comes about in Alcoholics Anonymous. After a while, I believe, if one is willing to live the steps. We've slandered our own selves and therefore slandered others. We let our own selves down. We didn't show up for work and consequently we let down employers. We let down friends and families, employers and put up… You know, no drunk could get a second job if he told the reason why he got fired from the first.
But somebody always covered for him. There's many of them that are dying today in industry today because supervisors, foremen are covering for them, lying for them. And then when the drunk, you know, and as long as the drunk got somebody that'll cover for him, we don't have to do anything about the problem, do we? Not a thing. As long as my wife had my problem, my children had my problem, my mother and father had my problem, the society had my problem, my patients had my problem, I didn't have any problem.
But when I started losing family and I started losing society and I started losing patients, I got down to my problem and me couldn't handle my problem. And me had to do something with me problem and me couldn't handle it. Me had to do something with it. And after I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I was told very emphatically that you do something about the obsessions of the mind whilst not drinking. Because David, they said, if you're not willing to do that, you will drink again.
And I said, how do you do that? He said, they said, dummy, just do all of the 12 steps. And you don't have to wait two, three, five, six, seven years, you do it. And I said yes, sir, to this man who is my sponsor. But as a result of we've broken faith, we've cursed God and man,
[00:10:00]
we have smashed most of the laws of God and man, and all we find out in the business of living sober and the business of living comfortably sober before we come to Alcoholics Anonymous, we've been miserable individuals. And I just have a simple suggestion. If there's anyone who is miserable, sober today in Alcoholics Anonymous, I suggest that they ask themselves only one question. Where am I in the STEP program, in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous?
And the answer becomes obvious after a while. And the most beautiful thing about before we got here, the fact that with the nature of the illness that we had, every one of those things that I said that we lied to ourselves and lied to others and cheated ourselves and cheated others, broken our own hearts and broken others, when we were drinking, are living the lifestyle before we come to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Because you see, before we come to Alcoholics Anonymous, even if we got sober temporarily, we did not grow along spiritual lines. We had no way to be innate, honest with our own selves and who we are and what we are in relationship to our Creator. And the entire guts of the spiritual recovery program of Alcoholics Anonymous and the whole program is spiritual. There ain't no spiritual side, spiritual part, or spiritual parts.
The entire program is spiritual, growing along spiritual lines. And what is spiritual? Living, just allowing our Creator to take us as we are, good and bad. And to live the truth. That's all, one day at a time. And that's not easy to do because I'll tell you, we are so used to believing the nature of the illness, that what was true for us was false for others, and what was false for us was true for others.
And then the alcoholic believes his life to be the only one. And that's the nature of the illness, the spiritual illness. And as a result, what happens? Every one of these things now can be traced back to alcohol. Now once we get alcohol out of our system and then we start to grow along spiritual lines, then there's another story. But if we refuse to take and use the program, then we don't have to worry about if we're not growing on spiritual lines because alcohol is going to snatch us once again.
So we are in a dilemma. We're in a trap that we can't break. We've either got to grow or we got to go. One of the two. Unless we can come to see the nature of what's happening to us. And so every one of those things that happened to us before we got here were the result of alcohol. And this is the great reason that, A, this is the great news that Alcoholics Anonymous brought to the alcoholic. This is the great news that Alcoholics Anonymous has brought to the world.
That the alcoholic, as we understand him, and the nature and the description of our understanding, is that we do not have a moral illness. That we do not, our understanding of an alcoholic is not the same as the church and society and everything else. Because there are many, not only in them, there's some in this room, and there are many hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Alcoholics Anonymous. The day before we got here, we were called no good and sorry and degenerate and everything else.
And today we're useful human beings. We're useful human beings. And so it is not a moral illness. How can it be moral if you got something that's self-inflicted, you don't want, you can't get rid of it? And that only God, as we understand him, through the recovery program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I'm talking about AA. I don't know any other way to live sober. I don't know any other recovery program.
This is the only recovery program I know. I don't know about any reaction courses, you know, concentration movement, hanging there, oh, I'm okay, you're okay, baby. I don't know anything about those things. Asks and all them other things. Just Alcoholics Anonymous. Now if we continue our inventory and consider our physical self, we find that our health has become impaired. Our memory has become faulty.
Sometimes it's on purpose. I don't know about you. I've been sober for 13 years and I still get once a week reminders in the mail from way back yonder. Appearances has become careless and slovenly. Finances are at a low F. I sponsor a monkey in Alcoholics Anonymous. He hit his financial bottom when his bank account got down to $400 million. And I said, well, what'd you start with? He said, one billion.
I understood that because, you see, I came down from $1,700,000 and when I got sober, I owed over $600,000 in judgment, $212,000 in tax liens to the Internal Revenue Service because I didn't file a pay income tax for 18 years. And God knows how many hot checks floatin' all over the world. Floating all over the world, and the only money I had was 30 cents.
[00:15:01]
I had a hard quarter, a solid quarter, and a nickel, and that's all that left, was left in the last blood I took to the blood bank to buy wine. So when that man was talking about coming down from a billion to 400 million, and me coming down from a million and 755 down to 30 cents, I understood exactly what he was talking about. You know? Well, that 30 cents was a lot of money to me. In fact, when I come down from the first night, I bought a big book, and I get my hot check on a non-existent bank.
Well, you said get one, and I got one, you know. And then when we honestly take ourselves apart, we wonder how on earth people put up with us to begin with. Now, it's a brave act to dissect for oneself, but we're compensated for the great feeling of satisfaction of having at last squarely faced an issue. There isn't an alcoholic that deep down inside doesn't know. We all know that sooner or later we're going to have to look at that whole cart, but we were afraid what was there.
In Alcoholics Anonymous, we call it the ungrounded, unfounded fears of the alcoholic. And we see so many alcoholics come to AA today, and they get sober, and they say, why didn't I find this program 10 years ago, 15 years ago? And you know why we didn't? Because we didn't. That's the reason. I was exposed to Alcoholics Anonymous 29 years ago, come this August in 1950. And I went out, and I drank after the meeting was over with, and came back in.
I was drunk when I got to the meeting, and I went back out, and I got drunker, and I had a fight, and they threw me out of the meeting. And they told me they didn't need my kind here, and furthermore, I was too young to be an alcoholic. And I agreed with them. And I had a 17-year slip. And so we're compensated for the great feeling of at last finally squarely facing an issue. And then once we come to find out what's wrong with us, and what can become right with us, no one in their right mind or their right senses wants to continue in the manner when we find out what's wrong with us.
And so now maybe we can understand the reason that we had to come to believe that a pirate wedding ourselves could restore us to have sense enough that while we're sober to do something about our lives in Alcoholics Anonymous. Because the next drink may be no more sober. It can be the last drunk that ends up in the cemetery. Now the purpose of taking the moral inventory is to dig as deep as we can into ourselves and expose our harmful defects of character and the thinking as a result of these defects of our alcoholic lives so that we can eliminate them from our own lives in this new way of life that AA suggests that we begin to develop.
Now when we get down to this step, if one does read the book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I'm not going to read it to you, it says that we're now down to, that the bottle is only symbols, and we're now down to the causes and conditions of our behavior, which is meant to me and means to me right this minute. The condition of my mind that caused me to do things I did. Now I have the same blood, same hair, same eyes, same bones as did when I was drinking.
Where's the change? It's my being as a human being. And where does the change come around in my being as a human being? The condition of my mind, my thinking. My thinking. See, none of us can change reality. We cannot change reality. The only thing we can change is our experiences as a human being in reality. We went through life making the same mistakes over and over and over and over and over and over, and it never got better, it got worse.
We've gone to Alcoholics Anonymous just because we stopped drinking and go to meetings. But don't read the big book. Don't work with drunks. Don't put the steps in our lives. We're going through the life making the same mistakes over and over and over and over, unless we can come to see the nature of what's going to happen to us. And this is the reason I love to go to meetings to where they tell their story about what it used to be like and what happened and how it is today.
By living the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And so we've got to find a way to remove these defects to where we'll always have them.
[00:20:01]
You know how you know when they're gone? When you ain't got them no more. And I woke up with them all today. But they're not as devastating as they used to be because I've got a slot to put them in. But I didn't know this. You know, when I was drinking, I tried to drown them defects of character, but the son of a gun's learned how to swim. And A, we mean by the word personality, the development of character habits necessary to our recovery from alcoholism.
Now, before we can ever hope to develop these desirable AA principles, we must first, I believe, find out the causes of our powerlessness over alcohol. And we will find out why we will not only fight with ourselves but everything and everybody. We'll also study and begin to discover the limitations that alcohol has placed on our lives. As our book tells us, to search out the flaws in our makeup which caused our failure.
It doesn't say to search out all them good things that made our lives so successful. And we've got folks in AA today that they've been taking inventories for 15 years full step. And they've got some inventories today that are thicker than the yellow pages of the Dallas phone book. Writing about yesterday, so tomorrow's going to be good. And today ends up a mess. You write just enough, I believe, just enough.
But it says to search out the flaws in our makeup which caused our failures. And I know that there's some four-step inventory guides out fine. You know, that's fine if somebody wants to do it. But I'm a firm believer that do AA first before we exhaust them alternatively. And so, and I went off and I run off when I was sober. You know, I had to go out of town meeting into another group to find out that the AA didn't get started in my group.
And the oldest sober member wasn't Bill Wilson, you know. And I went off and I heard one of them traveling hermits, you know. And he got up to expounding and running the steps. And he said, when you take the inventory, you've got to list your assets. Well, I come home and I told my sponsor, I'm going to have to list my assets in my inventory. He said, when are you going to write it? I said, well, when I get around to it.
But I'm going to list my assets. He said, well, if you find any of them, you let me know. And I looked real hard for two days. And I found out that the only two good things I had going for me at that time was that I wasn't drinking and I was still breathing in and out. That's the only assets I had. And then somebody said, well, you've got your wife and kids. List that. My sponsor says they're liabilities.
You don't know if they're going to stay. He said, it's just like borrowing money. If you borrow $1,000 from the bank and until you pay it all back, it's not listed as an asset. It's listed as liabilities. It's borrowed money. It's not yours. You've got to pay it back. He said, including your own sober life, you can't even list as an asset. Only today. You can't list it for a year. You can't market it or anything else.
You don't know if he will stay sober or not. And that made a lot of sense to me. That if I was ever going to acquire anything that I could call assets or good in life, that David was going to have to change David. And nobody else. Now, the seriousness of our drinking problem is deep-seated. Because it involves self-centered habits, emotions, and misconceptions that we acquire over a period of years.
Now, when we do this inventory in a thorough, business-like way. Now, I don't know about you about doing a business like that. I don't know. You know, I'm the kind of a person that when I, if my wife's gone for about a week or so, and the maid doesn't come, and she tells me, now be sure and keep your room clean. Well, when I sweep, I don't put it in the trash can. I just lift the rug up and slide everything under there, you know what I mean?
Because what you can't see, you don't know, do you? Well, I used to do my life that way. I wouldn't empty out the garbage. And I was carrying it with me. And I couldn't stand it. And I had to drink. I had to get over the smell and the hurt and the decay and the rottenness that was within me. Because you see, this is where the living is on, on the inside. We all look good on the outside. Tonight in here, we all look pretty good.
Pretty good. But until we can match that inside with the outside, that's the name of the game in our house now. So when we do this in a businesslike way, when we excuse the other party,
[00:25:06]
God, that was a great relief when I found that out. That no longer could I say, well, look at them. Why should I write down I was resentful of them? Look what they caused me to be. They're the ones that caused me to get mad. By God, let them write their own inventory and come and apologize to me. Say it with them. Stop saying that's not the way you do it. When we excuse the other party, or in other words, if there be fault, let it be mine, only then do I believe we can really expose our faults.
Now, when we first start on this task, we're going to find some faults that we want to correct right there and then. You know the two faults that most drunks want to correct right now? Well, the first one is when am I going to get them credit cards back and when am I going to get my credit straightened out so I can get me a car, and when am I going to get my pocket full of some of them dead presidents, and when am I going to get some clothes, money?
And then the second thing that most drunks, whether you're 90 or 18, it doesn't make a big deal, or in between, when am I going to be able to get from the back end of that car or the yard or the alley into the kitchen, into the hall, and into the bedroom? Or in other words, when is he or she going to let me come back home? That's the first two things, you know. And you know, isn't it amazing that that's the last place that a drunk usually takes the program, is into the home.
Now, I don't know if one does read the Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, but if you read the Book of Alcoholics and look at it, this is the way it's laid out. The first seven chapters are recovery, and then where does it take the next one? Chapter eight to the wives, I mean, chapter eight to the wives, chapter nine to the family afterwards, to the home. And then to the employer, and then to the world as a whole.
Or as it says, a further demonstration lies in our home life, our vocational life, and our business life, and in the world in which we live. And as a result of those two things, and then when we start, then we're going to start finding some other faults as we begin deeper. Faults that we want to keep and cherish and nourish for a little while longer. You see, back in them days, you'd say, you go to 90 meetings in 90 days.
A little drunk goes to 90 meetings in 90 days, and he ain't watched television, and he ain't seen old Ironside. You know, old Ironside had a full record of keeping drunks sober as anybody's ever been on television, you know. And he ain't been seeing the Monday night football game, and finally somebody said, why don't you stay home from the meeting tonight and watch the football game? So he stays home on Monday night and watches the football game.
Somebody said, you didn't drink, did you? No, it's pretty good, wasn't it? Okay. Now he's used to going to meetings on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Get ready to go to a meeting that Wednesday morning when he gets up, mama says to him, honey, you've been to 90 meetings in 90 days, you've picked up your 90-day chip, we're sure proud of you. He says, practice these principles and all that. Why don't you come to prayer meeting tonight, Wednesday night at the church house?
Well, the little drunk still hadn't forgiven himself, the way he treated mama and the kids, still carrying that guilt and that remorse because he ain't done nothing with the folks' stuff yet, and in a way to do it, talk it over in the fifth and then do something in the sixth and seventh. And he thinks it's the old ways, you know, of making the family feel good. If I just do what they want, everything's going to be all right.
I don't know if you're a partner for success, but I'll tell you what for failure, try to please everybody. And so he says, okay, mama, I need to go to the meeting. Well, you missed Friday. You're not going to drink in any way at the church, you're not. And so they go, and then afterwards they're standing around, and mama says, oh, by the way, you're used to having coffee with the people. We're going over to the preacher's house, and there's some of the church members that are there, and we're going to have some ice cream and some cake and a little fellowship.
And so the drunk goes, and then they say to him, well, why don't you come back and rededicate yourself to the church? Oh, it's so good to see you, and if you keep coming, why, you're allowed to be a deacon here pretty soon, or you're allowed to be an elder, or you're allowed to be on the board of stewards, and mama's grinning, you know. She ain't been to Al-Anon yet. And then that's two nights she ain't been.
She hasn't gone to meetings. Then he goes to work on Thursday. Somebody says, didn't I see you at church the other night? Yeah. Thought you was going to M-A-A-D. Well, say, by the way, you know, you used to be the best bowler this company had. You know, you used to be the best bowler this company had, and we're in a bowling league on Friday night, God, we could sure use you.
[00:30:02]
Well, I don't know, I got something to, why don't you come on down Friday, and we're going to be in the state tournament now in September, and here it is in May, or June, and by that time, your old arm and your eye, man, that rhythm will be back, and come on down and bowl. So he goes down and bowls. And that's three meetings he's missed. Then the next thing you know, next Monday night, the fellow said, we're going to see the game Monday night.
You're coming, the Cowboys playing in the state, oh, you don't want to miss that. And so his rhythm is upset. Old ideas, putting things before sobriety more than anything else, turning the back on the people who loved us and cared for us when nobody else wanted us, when everybody else wished we was dead, gone, and everything else, and now that we're sober, everybody's trying to snatch us and go back out in society.
And this is where undisciplined people, and with king-sized egos, and unless we're willing to, because I'll tell you something that tells in the big book, that if we do not take and use our program, this program, we are condemned to relive our past life, and in a lot of instances, it doesn't mean drinking either. But it's eventually will to unless we can come to see the nature of that problem. And so those, some of the old fellows said, well, you know, that business of trying to please everybody.
And the most dangerous thing in the world for an alcoholic, I believe, is to tell him how good he's doing, and then pat him on the head and let him get over the corner and start thinking for himself. And that's the worst thing I can do is think, drunk, sober, or dead. But you see, when we start doing those things, all we're asking for is future trouble, and that's not the plan of the AA way of life.
Now, this step calls for a thorough inventory, and thoroughness is a key along with honesty and willingness. Now, we discover when we get into our inventory that there are many variations of our self-centeredness that are without doubt the source of our trouble, and that some of these variations present themselves as a form of resentment, dishonesty, self-pity, jealousy, criticism, intolerance, fear, and anger.
If one does read the book of Eliot of Synonymous in the fifth chapter in the fourth step, right here is where we find the key to the beginning of growing spiritually. The first defect of character, resentment. Resentment is the number one enemy of us. It destroys more alcoholics. It is the number one offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else, and it is dynamite to the alcoholics. And from it stems all sorts of spiritual disease.
Now, what do we mean when we say that resentment from it stems all sorts of spiritual disease? First we resent, then we get mad, then we get angry, then we get frustrated, then we feel sorry for ourselves. Boo-hoo. A little drink might help. Remember, nobody loves me, nobody cares for me, and here I am, I'm getting sober, and they don't talk to me. The dog don't talk to me, the kids don't talk to me, mama don't talk to me, my boss is still hollering at me.
I'm still getting police tickets, and I gotta go to them dingy meetings all the time. Boo-hoo. And we find in Alcoholics Anonymous, until we overcome the spiritual malady, only then do we get mentally and physically well. Which means I ain't ever gonna get well. And we have to remember that every member of Alcoholics Anonymous is sick. That's the reason we're here. It's overcome the spirit. The only time I'll overcome the spiritual malady is when they pat me in the face with dirt.
Until we overcome the spiritual malady. So this is a daily, continuous thing, one day at a time. And you know, this resentment, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. For the alcoholic whose hope is the maintenance and growth of the spiritual experience, we found that it is fatal. Because when we harbor such feelings, we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns, and then what happens? We usually drink again, and with us to drink is to die.
Now we turn to this list with hopes and resentments because it holds the key to the future. And now we can look at it from an entirely different angle. Once we look at it, we can find out that the world and the people in the world dominated us. We didn't dominate. We allowed them to dominate us. They pushed our emotional knobs. That's the first thing that they are told in Al-Anon. Don't let that drunk upset you anymore.
You can't get him sober, and you can't keep him sober, and you are powerless over what he says and does. The only thing that you want to do is you can create an atmosphere to where it makes living sober comfortable in the home.
[00:35:00]
And you do that by quitting screeching and hollering and screaming, and just let the drunk do what he wants to because he's going to do it anyway. Now I've got one resentment against the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous. When I was your delegate at the General Service Conference a couple of years ago, I put this in a basket of questions. I asked them, I said, you know, Al-Anon's got this book out, Living with an Alcoholic.
When's they going to put one, Living with an Al-Anon? Because they took away my whipping gal, you know. They sure did, you know. And as a result, it turns the list because it holds the key to the future. We begin to see that the world and the people in it dominated us. And in that state, the wrongdoing or what we thought other people were doing wrong, whether they're real or whether we fantasized them or imagination, they have the power to actually kill us.
And you say, well, how can we escape? And we say that these resentments must be mastered, but how? Well, we couldn't wish them away any more than we could Al-Anon. And so now, when we get sober, we realize that the people who wronged us were too spiritually sick. One doesn't read the book of alcoholics, and I don't forget. It says that those who love us, the families, blood, kin, and emotionally attached, got sicker than we did, even though they didn't drink.
They were obsessed with the idea that somehow, someday, this alcoholic that they either fathered, mothered, married to, lived with, or did something to, or with, that by God, I'm going to shape him up or else. Or die doing it. And they, too, became sick. You betcha. And many of them shut themselves off, blew all themselves away from society. And so they, too, were spiritually sick. And though we did not like their symptoms and the way they disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick, too.
And so now we just simply ask God to show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. And I don't know about you today, but when a person offends me, I say, God, there's a sick one, you can help him. Even in Alcoholics Anonymous today. How can I be helpful to him? In other words, we avoid retaliation and argument. We don't push, nor do we resist. Because, you see, you wouldn't treat sick people that way once we know they're sick.
Because if we do, we destroy our chance to be helpful. Now, we cannot be helpful to all people, but at least we can show them how. Take a kindly, tolerant view of each and every one. And then returning to our list again, putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, now we can honestly look at the mistakes. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, and afraid? Though our situation had not been entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other person entirely.
And who were they to blame? Searching and fearless means to search, to carefully look for. Fearless means having no fear of whatever, of what we may find. So, therefore, we're going to make a searching and fearless inventory. We're going to leave no nook or cranny of ourselves past the present unturned. We're going to fearlessly search for all of our defects. We're not going to make a phony list, because we've been making such a list for years.
And now we're going to replace it with an honest one, item by item. Of course, we're going to find a lot of rotten stuff. But then what do we expect to find? After years of abnormal living, abnormal drinking, abnormal thinking. Some of it's going to be a little putrid and unpleasant, but it is in the inventory. And that's the basic reason we're taking it. In order to know what has to be eliminated in the next step.
Of ourselves. In no way do we permit the faults of others to enter this inventory. We assume full responsibility. It is an inventory of ourselves and our faults, not of our wives or husbands or boss or family and our friends, only of ourselves. When I was 42 days, 41 days sober, and I was in my sponsor company, at the group. And he said, when are you, he said, you beat out of my office a week from tomorrow.
I said, what for? He said, which old fifth step? I said, I haven't written the full step yet. He said, you write it. I said, wait a minute, they say that I would have been sober 41 days. And they said, that's because he says, you go into the secretary and you get your own surprise card out and you scratch off, my name is your sponsor and put down they. I said, no, I'm not going to do it. He said, you write about everything about you, David, that you have refused to tell anybody else.
[00:40:04]
You write everything about you that you think people don't know about you. And he said, may I remind you, David, we have an old saying in AA, that when you smell yourself, others have been smelling you for at least three days. I said, yeah, but, and he says, and furthermore, he says, I believe that you have got a court martial record where you're found on general court guilty. 250 pages, single space, legal size, on both sides of the page.
Read that. And then may I remind you, David, that you had your picture front and right side with your fingerprints, certainly your fingers, on the walls of every post office in 49 states at one time. I said, yes, sir. I'll be done. I'll be done. And so, on my 48th day, I go down there and take my full step. I've had a lot of drunks that say, oh, that's too young, you ain't been in alcoholism long enough.
I haven't had a drink. Now, back in the old days in alcoholism, they did it the first five days. The first five days. In Rosary Hall, at St. Thomas Hospital where it started, in Rosary Hall in Cleveland. First five days. And if you got drunk, you couldn't come back. Because they said, no, we give you the best shot we knew. We've got to keep these beds open for those that ain't known it yet. We're not going to make this into a valve and door for drunks.
You get sober and carry the message. Get sober and carry the message. Get sober and carry the message. Get sober and carry the message. Get sober and carry the message. Still today, our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve the right. That thing that's made alcoholics anonymous a great thing that it is. And so I wrote all those things about me. And I went down there to it.
To come to step five. Admit it to God, to ourselves, and another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs. You know, this step's not fair. Heck, this is not a fair step. That means that I've got to go to somebody who's got blood coursing in their veins and they're breathing in and out and they're running around on this world and they're going to know everything about me. What if they get drunk? What if they squeal on me?
You know? And so here again, we find a very logical sequence. Now, if we've looked at ourselves, we find it now makes sense to do something about writing what we found wrong. Now, if we've taken the four steps as AA suggests we do, we've already fulfilled the first two requirements of the fifth step. And that is admit it to God and to ourselves. Now, we admit it to God that we are in a trap. In the third step, made a decision to turn our world and our life over to God as we understood it.
And then we made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. And so we've done the first two. We don't realize it until after we look at it sometime. Or take somebody that's been around looking at these steps for a long number of years to bring this to our attention. Because a calm diagnosis of ourselves brings out our defects. And now we come to one of the oldest truths in the world. That a trouble shared is a trouble cut in half.
Now, to admit our wrongs to another human being may sound like an insurmountable obstacle, but actually it is very simple, I believe, if we go about it in the manner in which AA suggests that we do it. I've done wrong in the founding thing first. I've been so-and-so and so-and-so. If that were the method used, AA would not be the great fellowship and recovery program that it is today. Now, the AA member who is sober usually paves the way by first telling his or her story.
And I'm one of these that believe when we're asked to make an AA talk that we tell our story. That we share ourselves with people. The truth about ourselves. In good taste. We got a great line in the last line of that nice stuff, and a lot of drunks haven't figured it out yet, except when to do so would injure them or others. And then the newcomer is amazed at the frankness and ease in which the older sober member tells of usually unmentioned escapades.
They are amazed when the older sober member tells how rotten they'd acted towards their family, or how they'd spent some weeks' lives in jails and institutions, of dishonesties, of lies, of subterfuges, the whole sad picture. And one or two conversations, and this is where sponsorship is so vital in alcoholics and non-alcoholics. One or two conversations like this, and the new one will begin to unburden himself or herself.
And things that we thought that we would never tell, So, and things that we thought that we would never tell a living soul begin to come out, and as we share our innermost secrets, those things that we promised nobody would know, our minds become unburdened of the terrific weight that we have been carrying, or in other words, we literally get our troubles off of our chest, and one of the reasons for drinking was to drink to forget, but the trouble is, we couldn't forget, just like putting our shoes on backwards, we kept walking into ourselves all the time,
[00:45:22]
and this begins to disappear, and it is at this point, I believe, in Alcoholics Anonymous, that real sobriety begins, because in my book, sobriety is fourfold, mental, physical, emotional, and soul, and this is where emotional sobriety begins to take place, peace of mind, a little bit of serenity, a little bit of inner happiness, and I don't believe any alcoholic can be safe today until we have unburdened ourselves, and then we begin to feel that we belong, and after we have either made a little talk for a few minutes, or maybe not, come to the meeting, chair a meeting, participate in a meeting, then we feel that we are becoming a full-fledged member, and then the new one is definitely progressing, and I believe is ready for the next two steps, but we're going to wait a minute here.
When I got ready to take my fifth step, now this step has conditions, basically four conditions. We are, above all else, trying to establish a new attitude and a new relationship with our Creator, and to discover the obstacles in our path, and what's the biggest obstacle to me, in my attitude, my new attitude, and my new relationship? Now, AA never lets you down and never will let you forget what we're here for. It says if we do not take and use this vital step, we may not overcome drinking. It still nudges you now. Don't get too good too quick. Don't get good before you get well.
You know, we got them come to AA, you know, God, they get here for about two months, and the next thing you know, they're not drinking, they start losing weight, and they quit cussing, and quit smoking. I've never been arrested for fat driving. I don't know about anybody around here. You know, hey, that's what you call getting good before you get well. Hey, and then the third condition. Being alone with God doesn't seem as embarrassing, but we still have that old egoism.
And then the fourth condition. If we are to live a reasonable, comfortable, and a reasonable, happy, sober life, the time now comes where we have to be honest with another human being. And so I went down there to see that sponsor that Wednesday morning at 8 o'clock. He called his secretary and he says, cut the phones off. And then he looked at me and he says, have you admitted to God and then to yourself the exact nature of your wrongs before you come down here?
I said, no, nobody does it like that. He says, you're an alcoholic synonymous 48 days and you're an expert. He says, well, you go do it. I said, nobody does it that way. He says, you're going to do it that way. I'm still afraid of my sponsor. And I tell you the reason. I don't want to cross him because everything he's told me has turned out to be true. Right to this minute. Everything he's told me has turned out to be true. He said, I'll tell you what you do. You go in the men's room and you lock the door and then you go into the commode part and you slide the bolt and you get over the corner between the commode and the corner of the wall and you admit to God the exact nature of your wrongs.
And then when you get through, you unlock that commode and you come around to the sink. Right above the sink is a mirror. You look in the mirror and you admit the exact nature of your wrongs to you. And then when you get through, you come in here. I said, well, that'll take three weeks. He says, no, he says the exact nature of your wrongs, dummy. Did you write the inventory? I said, yes. He said, did you write about resentment? Did you write about hate? Did you write about fear? Did you write about jealousy? Did you write about not wanting to tell anybody anything? That's the exact nature of the wrongs. That's what caused it all. Plus the fact you couldn't stay sober. I don't want to hear for who with and for how long and for how much. They ain't got nothing to do with it.
We're going to talk about the exact nature of the wrongs. He said, idiot, it's just like when you're drinking and driving. What's going to happen? I said, I either get caught or I don't get caught. He says, okay, but what's the exact nature of the wrongs? I said, driving whilst drunk. He said, now you're getting smart. It's not who you run over. It's not what tree you hit. Smart little fellow, wasn't he?
[00:50:11]
Went into the men's room, locked the door. Went in the commode, locked the door. Felt like a fool. Just the one whore. Nobody else in there. Got over in the corner, admitted to God the exact nature of my wrongs. Unlocked the door, come around to the sink, looked in the mirror and admitted the exact nature of the wrongs to me. And I started admitting the exact nature of the wrongs to me and guess what? I caught me not telling me what I told God in the corner.
I said, well, if I told God one thing, me one thing, what am I going to tell him? So I go back into the commode and I do it again. I come back out, look in the mirror, do it again. Sounded almost the same. And so I wouldn't mess it up. I run out of there. I run into his office and he said, you ready? And I said, yes. And he told the guy, I'll cut the call phones off. He looked at me and said, how many times do you go in the corner? I said, two times. He said, I went three. He said, I did this for a reason. He said, it was done to me. And I did it for a reason.
Number one, he said, if you go around telling this one, some of your dirty story and you go around this one, tell some more. And this one, he said, that's what you call dumping your laundry instead of getting it all together. He said, that's what you call spreading the disease. And he said, and then you're going to get a hold of somebody and they say, oh, David, you weren't really that bad. And then you're going to find somebody. I said, David, I don't even believe you and Uncle Paul. He said, God's here, you're here, and I'm here. Let's just get with it. And I did.
And God, he was good. He had a pad and a pencil, and I thought he was writing everything down. And when he got through, he pitched it at me. And every time I talk about hating this or that, he'd already had resentment, selflessness, dishonesty, and fear. And he'd just make a, like he'd chalk up dominoes, hickey. He said, there it is. There it is. That's the reason you're doing all this, because you had no way to undo it. And as a result, you're blaming people. He said, how do you feel? I said, oh, God, I feel pretty good. He said, what are you going to do with it? All you did was talk about it, still got them. All you did was get them out. They're still with you. What are you going to do with it?
I can't take and dump them. He said, I got to dump my own one day at a time. I said, well, that's why I'm asking you to be my sponsor. I'm going to ask you what I do. He said, I'll tell you what to do. You go home, and you get the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and you turn to the last paragraph of the fifth step in the sixth chapter, and you read it. And then you turn the page, and you read the next two paragraphs, and that's all.
And he said, and if it takes you more than ten minutes to take the sixth and the seventh step, you have not been down here, David, with a good fifth step. And he said, and by the way, next Wednesday, you be down here with your list. I said, what list? He said, your eighth list. He said, and don't give me any excuses. You already got part of it, most of it down there. You listed the names of the people when you wrote your fourth step down. And then we'll add the others. I'll see you.
And be to the meeting tonight. So I went home. And I opened up the book of Alcoholics Anonymous at the last paragraph of the fifth step in the sixth chapter, and it is true. It is the one step in the program that suggests what to do after we've completed it. And it says, returning home, we find a place where we can be quiet for an hour, carefully reviewing what we have done. We thank God from the bottom of our hearts that we know him better. Isn't that something? We don't thank God from the bottom of our hearts that whoever heard our fifth step knows us better, or that we feel better. We thank God from the bottom of our hearts that we know him better.
The first condition, if one starts out reading the fifth step in the book of Alcoholics Anonymous, it says we are above all else trying to establish a new attitude and a new relationship with our creator. Not to repair the old one. The old one didn't work. But a new attitude and a new relationship. And it starts right here. And you know how the attitude and the relationship comes about? It's totally determined. Our attitude and our relationship with the rest of God's kids. That's all. If we're honest with another human being, then we're honest with one of God's kids. And if we're honest with one of God's kids, then we're honest with God in living action.
[00:55:06]
And if it gets more complicated than that, I'm going to have to go get me another recovery deal. That's it. Yeah. But I couldn't be innately honest without putting conditions on it. I'll be good to you if. I'll be good to you but. I'll help you but if you will do this or that. And now it's a gift. We just do it because we love to do it. We thank God for the body of my heart so we know him better. And then taking the book down from the shelf, we turn to the page which contains the twelve steps. Carefully reading the first five proposals, we ask ourselves. If we have omitted anything, for we are building an arch through which we shall walk a free man at last. You see, we're free of alcohol at this step. Now it helps if you ain't drinking to take the fifth step, I'll tell you.
We're free of alcohol at this stage of the game, but now we're building an arch through which we shall walk free. Free of our own self. Free of our own destructive obsessions of the mind that makes life so miserable, livid, with all those hates and resentments and fears. And fearing we didn't get our due. Is our work solid so far? Are the stones properly in place? Have we skimped on the cement put in the foundation? Have we tried to make mortar without sand? If we can answer to our satisfaction, then we can look at step six. So let's look at step six. We're entirely ready to have God remove all those defects, all these defects of character. See it says these, we still got them. It don't say those, these.
It doesn't say my sponsor can remove them, the group can remove them, the Internal Revenue Service can remove them, MasterCard can remove them, these, my wife, my kids, God. When I got to you people, I was ready for the yellow pages of the phone book to remove me, anything. God remove. Can I, can he now remove every one of them? If we still cling and hold on to something and will not let go. We just simply ask him to make us willing to let go. And so the sixth step is a quality of willingness. And remember that honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness are essentials to our recovery, but they are indispensable.
If we still cling and hold on to something and will not let go, we just simply ask him to make us willing to let go. And when ready, we say something like this. And here's where I found the second prayer in the book of All Heart of Stones. And it is a prayer that has been a lifesaver to me. And I use it all the time. And as I said, when ready, we say something like this. My Creator, I am now willing that you shall have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defective character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows.
You see, if I'm going to be useful to God and to my fellows, and that is, I'll be useful to God, I'll be useful to my wife, and to my children, two sons, to my patients, the members of Alcoholics Anonymous Society, if I stay sober one day at a time, and are willing to put everything in the right slot and are willing to be my brother's brother, not my brother's keeper. And to get along as honest as I can one day at a time. I will automatically help society. And then Alcoholics Anonymous and living. Alcoholics Anonymous and family and sobriety and family and working and living becomes all in one and the same.
And I'm going to run that by again. I am now willing that you shall have all of me, good and bad, and I pray that you now remove from me every single defective character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength as I go forth to do your bidding. Amen. And as the book says, we have completed step seven. I want to thank you for your attention, for your attendance, and next week while we'll be on them two goodies, and that is people steps. They are two of the most beautiful steps in Alcoholics Anonymous. People, steps eight and nine. And we'll see you next week, God willing, and if it don't rain too hard. Thank you.
Applause.