Audio
About this recording
- Topic
- His Story 20th Spring Conference
- Speaker
- Dave P
- Date
- 2010-05-06
Transcript
Source: Dave P – His Story 20th Spring Conference – 2010-05-06.mp3 File: dave-p-his-story-20th-spring-conference-2010-05-06.mp3 Duration: 00:45:52
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My bookie may call. Hi, everybody. My name's Dave Pistol, and I'm an alcoholic. And my home group is the Third Legacy Group of Bellingham, Washington. And my sobriety date is April the 18th, 1976. And I have a sponsor. I don't call him very often, but I have one. And, you know, not much goes wrong in my life anymore where I, I mean, I, and I think one of the big reasons for that is that I have really been able to internalize that I'm just not nearly as important as I always thought I was.
And that, you know, most of the time when I've been having problems, I can look around the room and now I fully understand that the only guy that wasn't on my side was me. So it's a pleasure to be at conferences like this. Whoever invited me, I think I know who it is, but I learned a long time ago if you start using names, all you got to do is leave one name out and somebody's got a serious resentment.
And so I'm not going to do that. I will tell you, though, there is one guy that went about five miles beyond any lengths last night to get us here. And where is he? There he is, John. And we came swinging in here about 3 a.m. last night, and poor old John. So. I particularly want to thank him. About a week ago, I was at a place called PCN. I can't remember what it stands for. It stands for North. There's a north unit and a south unit, but I don't know what the PC is.
And this is a bunch of guys that were essentially incarcerated because they had committed some felonies. They had come to the attention of the authorities, which is not all that much trouble for alcoholics. And the authorities looked them over and said, Well, you know, you guys, really, we should put you in jail, but that's not going to do any good because we have some idea what your problem is. So we're going to give you a choice. We can put you in jail, or we can send you to PCN. And it's not going to be a voluntary commitment to PCN.
You have to go there and stay there until we tell you you can leave. And it is a lockdown rehab. And you have to go there, and they have people there. They bring AA meetings in. And you know, places like that used to scare me to death, because I never was a tough guy. What am I going to say to these guys? You know, they've got some serious scowls going in there, and they've got some serious ink all over them.
And, you know, like, what am I going to say that's going to impress them? And I've been around here long enough to know that my job is not to go impress them. My job is just to go tell them what happened to me and tell it straight up and honest. No razzle dazzle. Don't shy away from God. Don't shy away from spirituality. Don't shy away from anything. Go give them what you got. Go give them what they gave you when you walked in.
And I had a great time. I always do. I had a great time with these guys. Just tell them straight up. Say, you know, you don't have to tell us that you don't want to work the fourth step. We know that. You know, we have yet to have our first drunk come in here that was enthusiastic about working the fourth step. They never are. You know, you don't want to have to tell us that the language in our book is a little bit old and dated and maybe a little stale.
We know that. We'd love to change it, but we don't trust anybody to do that. You know, what if they—I mean, you know, come on. And on top of that, let me tell you, that old stale language in that book has been instrumental in getting about two million people on this planet sober, just like it's written. And we don't know if it's really two million or not. That's just a number we don't fight over, so we use it.
And you can tell when somebody appreciates you being straight up
[00:05:02]
with them. And I have such a good time going to places like that, and that was so unlike me to be able to do that comfortably and having fun. I wore a tie, coat and tie. And this is gray concrete stuff where I'm at. And, you know, I don't know where these institutions get that god-awful green they paint their stuff. Looks like watered-down pea soup. Anyway. I wore a tie and said, if you're wondering about the tie, this tie is to honor you.
You are potentially some of our newest members, and this tie is to honor you. And it's to honor Alcoholics Anonymous, because in all I do, I honor you. It's my joy to honor you. So it was really great. I had a great time. And so that's what's been going on the last few days in my life. I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous on April the 17th—I'm sorry, April the 14th of 1976. And when I came in here, the facts of my life were kind of grim.
I was, first of all, drinking about a case of vodka a week. I was getting the munificent sum of 63 bucks a week from the Texas Unemployment Commission, and with that I purchased a case of vodka, and I bought a little orange juice to put a little color in it. So what I was drinking was a cocktail; it was not just vodka. And I was sent to Alcoholics Anonymous by the Dallas County Health Clinic. And I was going to them because I was depressed.
I was up one night about 2 a.m. having a nightcap, and they had this public service announcement that said, If you're depressed, maybe we can help you. So I, for some reason, remembered that the next morning when I came to, and I called them, and they told me to come in. They gave me an appointment every Monday, 1 o'clock. Jeanette Beavers, she was my— My therapist. And I would go in there every Monday at one o'clock and tell her what was wrong with my life as I saw it.
And as you might guess, absolutely none of it was my fault. Look what they have done to me. I'm sure they did the same kinds of things to you. And none of it was my fault. And I don't know how this, I don't know how these people do it. I honestly do not know how Jeanette Beavers could sit there every Monday afternoon from one to two and listen to the drivel that came out of my mouth. I really don't understand how she could do that.
I mean, it's just, I don't know how I could do that. But she did. And like all true therapists, you know, they just lay there in the weeds waiting for you to break the ice. And then they're on you like an alligator. The minute you say it, boy, their jaws clamp down on you. You know, in all that time when I told her what was wrong in my life, there were a few things that I left out. Never occurred to me to tell her.
I mean, see, I'm trying to get this lady to like me. That's my whole game. That's all I got left, is trying to get you to like me and approve of me, or at least not disapprove of me. And so I'm not going to tell her all that stuff. She's the last, she was the last human relationship of any kind that I had going in my life. The last one. And, and, you know, my understanding of therapy is that if you tell your therapist how you react to external stimuli, to the world around you, that they can make some suggestions that will help you not react that way or alter your behavior some so that you'll be more content living in the world.
Well, I didn't care about all that. I'm trying to get this lady to like me. I'm going to say whatever she wants to hear, and I don't have to ask her what she wants to hear. We're alcoholics, man. We can figure out what they want to hear without any help at all from anybody, thank you very much. But a few things that I left out were things that were examples of some
[00:10:00]
really serious problems that I'd had in my life. And like, when I was a little boy living on the streets with my parents, I was sexually abused on the streets. I never told anybody. I certainly didn't tell Jeanette that. And what effect did that have on me? I don't know. I really don't know. But I didn't even consider telling her that. Oh, I didn't even think about it. You know, if you just ignore it, it goes away, and you don't have to think about it.
But all of these things had happened to me, and I'm telling her this, and finally one day, like a dummy, I said, Well, when are we going to talk about my drinking? And she said, Oh, do you have a drinking problem? Well, there are a few other things that I haven't told you about concerning my life at that time. I hadn't had a bath in a long time. I don't know how long, a long, long time. You know, if you keep drinking, if you stay with it long enough, that is one of the routine eventualities of alcoholism.
You reach the point where bathing is no longer important, where hygiene just doesn't matter. Changing your clothes is not going to contribute anything to your life. It's just not. You know, yeah, I can take a bath and change clothes. I can find some clean ones, but for what? I'm not going to feel any better about me or you or the world I live in. I'm not. And you just, you know, and I'm telling these people I'm coming here because I'm depressed.
Well, try drinking a case of vodka a week for a long time and not get depressed. I never tied that together. I had no scruples of any kind. You know, I mean, those are just natural places we go to if we're alcoholics. So I said to Jeanette, When are we going to talk about my drinking? And she said, Oh, do you have a drinking problem? See, if any of your senses worked, if you could see, if you could smell, if you could hear, if you had anything at all going on up here, you would have known from the minute you first saw me that I am an alcoholic.
And there's no escaping it. Can't hide it. And she looked at me and she said, Dave, we're getting a program started here in Alcoholics—I mean, in the county health thing. It's a federal program, and we're getting a big grant, and if you want me to, I can get you in it. I recommend that you don't bother. I said, Why? She said, Oh, they don't ever do any good. She said, I recommend that you go to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Well, I was wounded. Why on earth would you want me to go there? And she said, Because they have the best record in town. They're the only game in town for alcoholism. And so that was how I came to you. That's why I came. I don't know if I would have ever come. I don't know if I would have ever found you. So that had taken me a long time to get to that point. You know, I mean, alcoholism is not an overnight deal.
You know, you got to work at it for a prolonged period of time. And the evidence that, you know, that the chains of alcoholism are too strong to be felt until they're too strong to be broken escapes our notice. We don't notice that. It happens very slowly. And the next thing you know, we're in the trap, and we have no hope of getting out, and we don't even know how far into the trap we are. We are just blissfully ignorant of how dire our circumstances are.
So here I come. She tells me to go to AA. I said, Okay. I went to AA, and I walked into my first AA meeting, and a fellow named Michael Healy came up to me. And see, I didn't want to come here because being a really clever alcoholic, I knew before I got here what I was going to find, didn't you? Yeah, we all know what's going to be here when we get here. You know, just a bunch of dirty old dudes, you know, scruffy dudes, no shaves, no teeth, you know, tennis shoes, you know, army surplus coat, rope belt, you know.
I don't want to hang out with people like that. Well. People like that? Well, who does?
[00:15:01]
On top of that, the only person that fit my description of an alcoholic at my first meeting was me. Gotta love that. But this guy named Michael Healy, he was a really good guy. He was head of radiology at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, and he was there in a three-piece suit. And he walked right out and he said, Hi, my name is Michael. He didn't do any Doctor Healy stuff on me. He just said, Hi, my name is Michael. We're glad you're here.
And a little lady named Helen Elliott came up. Helen was a little gray-haired lady, and she put her arms around me and gave me a big hug. And you know, when she got a whiff of me, she didn't flinch at all. You know, she just kept hugging me. Like, what are you doing? And she said, We're glad you're here. We hope you come back. So I walk into this room. I am a derelict of my own making. I am unemployed. I am unemployable.
What few teeth I have left are essentially black. I haven't attended to any personal hygiene in forever. I drank—if my eyes were open, I was drinking. I had lost every job I had ever had, most of them due to alcohol. I had three marriages that were down the tubes due to alcohol. I put everything in the pot, everything in the pot. Pushed it all out in the middle of the table and said, Bet it all. And I had absolutely no idea how I got into that trap, and I had even less of an idea of how to get out of it.
And I was pretty convinced that I was not going to get out of it, you know, because I know what happens to me when my eyes fly open every morning. You know, we get to the point where we don't go to sleep and wake up. We pass out and come to. And every morning when I came to, I knew two things immediately as soon as my eyes flew open. The first thing was, if I don't quit drinking pretty soon, I'm going to die.
And I knew that to be true, and it was true. You know, you can't pour that kind of stuff in you at that rate and live for too long. But the other thing I knew immediately was that if I don't have a drink in the next five seconds, I'm going to die. And that's what our book refers to as the dilemma of the alcoholic. I had none of the attributes in my possession that we believe, most of us believe, we need to recover from alcoholism. I was so far from honesty.
I mean, honesty to me, the truth was irrelevant to me. I didn't care one way or the other. If it turned out to be true, great. If it wasn't, who cares? I was not open-minded at all. I was very closed-minded. I knew things. You know how we are. We know things. And I was not willing to do much of anything. And I was always taking the attitude, What's the point? This is not going to do any good. I've tried all that stuff.
I tried all those things. You know, it's not going to work. So, you know, what are you going to do with me? I mean, here I am. This is the kind of condition I'm in. I'm a derelict of my own making. I am almost dead. Michael Healy, my first guy was a sponsor, was a doctor. He said, You know, I almost didn't bother to come over and shake hands with you the first night you came in. It looked like to me you were only going to be alive another two or three days. And, I mean, I took it to the wire.
And so, what are you going to do with me? How are you—how is anybody or anything going to overcome my negativity, my closed mind, my willingness, my belief in—how are you going to give me a belief in anything? How are you going to do that? And, I mean, I had looked everywhere. Our book says, the last part of chapter five that we normally read, it says, you know, that our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after may clear three pertinent ideas.
A— you know, I like that. Three ideas: A, B, C. Why not one, two, three? See? Aren't you glad you don't have to live in my head? It's lonely in there. A, B, C.
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A, I'm an alcoholic and I can't manage my own life. How in the world am I going to refute that? I mean, look at me. You know, my life is—it turns out my life is not unmanageable. It's just unmanageable by me. Since I've let somebody else manage it, things have gone pretty well. But when I was managing it, it was a disaster from the beginning. I was never comfortable a single time in my life that I can remember, which means to me there weren't any sustained periods of comfort.
I would have remembered something like that. I was never comfortable in my own skin, never. I was never pleased with me. I'd never approved of me. I was never satisfied with me. I always knew that you were looking at me as though I were some kind of freak. You were kind enough not to say it out loud, but that's what you thought. So I'm an alcoholic, and I cannot manage my own life. And certainly that was true. I mean, there I was, a derelict of my own making.
Nobody did that to me. I did that to me. The second idea was that probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. Well, I told you about Jeanette. That's a human power. I had tried religions, you know, preachers, churches, and I don't know what they said. You know, we hear funny. You know, we hear sideways. I don't know what they said, but I do know what I heard. And what I heard was, Look, Dave, you see, we own God, and if you want to get next to God, you're going to have to go through us, okay?
Now here are the rules for getting help from God. Here's what you got to do. And I'm sure they didn't say that, but that's what I heard. That's exactly what I heard. You know, if you have faith, you can be saved. Where the hell am I going to get any faith? I don't, I mean, they don't sell that at Walmart, do they? I mean, where am I going to get any of that? My life had never gone well. I mean, faith is not something that you just either have or don't have.
In my opinion, you know, it's something that you develop over time. But that's what I heard them say. And there's no way I can do that. I cannot, I cannot follow the rules I hear you giving me to be eligible for God's help. You know, I'd like to. I cannot rise to that level of purity. I just can't. You know, I have tried and I can't do it. The other people that I tried, the other powerful humans, was medical science.
I decided at one point that things were getting pretty bad. I should probably do what the world I lived in had conditioned me to do, which is, you know, if something's wrong, go see your doctor. So I called. I didn't have a doctor, but it's not a stumbling block for an imaginative alcoholic. I called the American Medical Association and asked them to recommend a doctor who was experienced treating people who drank too much.
I'm sure I didn't refer to myself as an alcoholic. I mean, I wasn't that bad. So I got this very nice old man, and he's a doctor. I mean, you know, the AMA, they weren't really all that thrilled to hear from me, if you can believe that. They didn't want to tell me nobody about nobody's name. But, you know, we bring out the very worst in people. We really do. And so just to get rid of me, you know, finally they will do anything if you'll just shut up and get off the phone.
So they gave me a doctor's name. I called this guy, went to see him. It was a pretty routine visit. I sat on the edge of his table. He popped my knee with his little orange triangular rubber hammer, and my leg flew up, that sort of thing. You know, he convinced himself that I was still able to frost a mirror. So he whipped out his prescription pad, and he said, Okay, I want you to take these as directed and come back in two weeks.
Now, these will not cause you to quit drinking, but they will make you drink less. And I thought, Oh man, this is so sweet. Look how well this is working out.
[00:25:00]
This is exactly what I wanted. You know, I just take these little magic tablets and I'm going to drink less. Well, my first wife was a nurse, and she worked for an internal medicine specialist, and I had a PDR at home, Physician's Desk Reference. And before we became a nation of drug addicts, you know, you could order just about anything you wanted to, a doctor could, through the mail, except narcotics.
You know, hard narcotics, couldn't order those. But we didn't even have terms like controlled substance then. We didn't even have that. So, I knew something about drugs. I knew that my wife took Librium or Valium, either one, in order to try to keep from going crazy because she was married to me. I knew that my mother-in-law took amphetamines when she and her husband would go out and party because you can stay awake all night long and drink all night long.
And see, I never wanted to be slumped over in a corner on the nod. I want to be up snapping my fingers, dancing, having fun. And I found out that if I had an unlimited supply of amphetamines, which I had access to, I could just, you know, I mean, I lived in Southern California at the time, and I drank up and down Ventura Boulevard. And let me tell you, I had—I'm buying amphetamines in bottles of a thousand, and I'm passing them out to whoever wanted them.
They're just too cheap to worry about selling them. Never occurred to me to sell them. Just give them away. And if you're drinking where I'm drinking, you can build up a hell of an entourage on Ventura Boulevard in California if you're passing out free amphetamines. And I never, I really never liked drugs at all. Didn't care for them. But I liked amphetamines because they stretch it out. So when he gives me this prescription, I looked at it, and it said Librium, 75 milligrams. Lord, that's a lot of Librium.
You know, this is not going to help. I knew about that. This is not going to help. This is going to make it worse, a lot worse. Yeah, I'm going to drink less. I'm going to spend a lot more time unconscious than I used to. Sheesh. So, well, you know, this is worse than nothing. And this is the only answer? I mean, I go to a guy who's supposed to be a hotshot guy that treats people who drink too much, and all he's got for me is Librium?
That's it? See, we like to go around and badmouth people. You know, look what medical science gave me. Look what this doctor gave me. Well, that doctor went to medical school before it became alcoholism, before the AMA said it's an illness, before any of that. That doctor went to medical school when it was still considered a moral problem. Why on earth would they teach him how to treat a moral problem?
It took a long time before I got that understanding and broad-minded. You know, we like to rail away at people. We love to find someone to place the blame on. If anybody is good at assigning blame, it is us. We can go right to the heart of the problem every time. But doctors, they had no answer for me. I talked about, you know, my therapist, Jeanette. You know, I mean, how is she going to help me? I have essentially lost interest in survival.
I have no interest at all in the truth, or what may be, you know, valid truth. How is she going to help me? I mean, all I'm doing is just wasting her time. How can anybody help? So when that book says, No human power could have relieved our alcoholism, I established to my complete satisfaction. I looked everywhere I could find to get out of that trap, and didn't even come close. Didn't even find the dimensions of the trap, much less get out of it. So the third idea is that God could and would, if He were sought.
Well, that's tough. See, here I come, Dave the derelict. See, here I come, Dave the derelict. I come waltzing into your meeting, and your
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mission, if you care to accept it, is to somehow see if you can't get me to turn my life and my will over to the care of God, as we understood Him, as I understood Him. That's a tall order. You know, that's just routine business for AA. That's just routine stuff for us. I come into AA. You know what's unusual about me? Nothing. Nothing. I'm not an unusual alcoholic. I'm a typical alcoholic, just typical.
You know, I respond to alcohol like all of you do. You just keep pouring it in and you turn into a derelict. It's just, you know, that's the way it is. It's just the way it is. How do you get out of it? Well, our book says no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. I had, like, completely and totally believed that. And so your job when I turn myself into you is to somehow see if you can't get me to turn my life and my will over to the care of God.
Alcoholics Anonymous never broke faith the whole time. I mean, because I went there, I said my first day was April the 14th. I went there drunk. If my eyes are open, I am drinking. That's just the way it is in my life at that time. I went there April the 15th, drunk, the 16th, drunk, the 17th, drunk, and every one of those days that I went there, you consistently Told me the same thing. Dave, we don't have enough power, pal.
We don't have enough power to either individually or collectively to get you sober or keep you that way. We just don't. We can only recommend that you do what we did. And that is turn your life and your will over to the care of God as you understand Him, you know. And I said what I said a lot when I was brand new. I said, You know, you don't understand. See, you ever sponsor anybody, and they call you on the phone and they say, Okay, here's the problem, and they lay it out, and it's the biggest line of hooey you ever heard in your life. And you say, Well, what you need to do is go make amends to that person. They say, Well, see, you didn't hear what I said.
So they go back to the beginning and they start over. And I said, No, no, no, I hear what you said. I heard what you said completely, you know. But I just said, You don't understand. I said, You know, I don't think I believe in God, even believe in God. And you said, Oh, it doesn't matter. We don't care. And I said, Well, you can't just be cavalier about it like that. And you said, Yeah, that's the way we do it. You know, God is you understand Him.
You just, you know, decide in your own mind what you think God is, and that's what He is for you. And I said, Boy, you know, you really just can't do that. And they said, Yeah, we can. That's how we do it. And that's the only hope you got, pal. That's all. You know, and that's all you need to do. Just go home and tell whatever power that you believe may be greater than yourself. And if you don't think there's a power greater than yourself, what you're saying is that you are the most powerful thing in the universe.
And I don't think you mean that, and I don't think you're prepared to say that. So whatever power that you think may be greater than you, go ask him for help. Maybe it's a her. Maybe you'd rather have a she God. Go ask her for help. Just ask for help. And I could not bring myself to do that the 14th or the 15th or the 16th, but finally on the 17th of April 1976, I got home from that meeting after hearing the same thing four days in a row, four nights in a row, and I just said, God, if I'm going to quit drinking, you're going to have to help me, because I cannot do it.
I cannot do it. I knew that was true. I knew it was true. I had tried everything. And I wish I could tell you how I felt when I said that. You know, I wish I could tell you what emotions were going through me when I said that. But you know, if you're drinking a case of vodka a week, your memories are not crisp. So I really don't know how I felt.
[00:35:00]
And it appeared to me that absolutely nothing happened. Nothing. I mean, nothing. And I finished the drink I was working on. I had another one and another one, and I did what I did every night. I just drank till I passed out. When I came to the next morning, April the 18th, 1976, I began what has, up to this moment, been continuous sobriety. God did overnight what I had been running around all over the world talking to everybody under the sun, feeding them BS and all of that, trying to get out of the trap. It was a long time since I'd wanted the cheese.
I just want out of the trap. And He did it overnight. Overnight. That is incredible, you know. And I have heard things since then that are just, they just take my breath away, you know. One of them is, you got to start where you are. You got to start where you are, you know. Grace comes to you where you are, but it never leaves you where it found you. And was I a happy, cheerful, newly sober guy? No. No, no.
I hurt all over. But, and it took me a long time to get some of the things, to get up to a point in my life where I see other people, it appears to me that they got there a lot quicker than I did. And, you know, if I wanted to run with that, which I don't, I could. What is amazing to me is it is given to me just like it has been given to you. You know, it's all the same. We're all— Given the same thing.
I have got some things that go on in my life today that just are amazing to me. I was a complete failure as a human being, and I'm not trying to be overly dramatic about that. I just was. You know, I didn't have anybody that taught me how to be a decent, vibrant, honest human being with integrity or anything. I didn't learn any of that from anybody until I got to you. I just didn't. And that is certainly not an effort to place the blame on anything that ever happened to me on anybody but me.
See, if my troubles are your fault, I am screwed. Because before I can get any better, I got to get you to change. So I accept full responsibility for myself, and that is absolutely marvelous to be able to do that. Such a relief. If I want to get better, I can get better, and you can do whatever you want to do, but you can't get in the way of my getting better. So I was never in any way taken with the idea of honesty.
If it was yours and I wanted it, I would just take it from my earliest memories. I was never interested in integrity. All I was interested in was not getting caught. And I would gladly—I mean, I was reminded recently of a little something that me and a buddy of mine pulled. Back in our feckless youth, we decided one night, whilst having a couple of cocktails, that it would be fun to break into this house we knew of where the people who lived there owned guns.
We knew they owned a lot of guns. So we're going to find out a night when they're not at home. We're going to break into their house and we're going to steal their guns. Well, the people who owned these guns were all members of Hell's Angels. Great idea. So we went up one night, all the lights were out. We knocked on the door. Nobody answered. So we just got out our screwdriver and flashlight and took the hasp off the front door, went inside and got all their guns.
Six, I think it's six or seven pistols. And my friend, my friend EP says, Which ones do you want? And I said, I don't want any of them. I'm just having fun. So he took all of them. And we just left. Never heard another word about it. But, you know, you got to have a death wish to do things like that. But that's
[00:40:05]
the kind of nonsense that I lived in. So I had absolutely nothing going on in my life that I could apply the concept of worthwhile human to. You know, I just wasn't. I don't know why I wasn't. I just wasn't. I was married several times. My wife's name is Polly. Polly, I'm sure you're shocked to hear this, but Polly is not my first wife. There have been three wives before her. And as my Al-Anon buddy Carol T.
likes to say, Yes, and Dave, you were the only common thread in all three of those failures. You guys are tough. You guys are tough. In all those marriages, I had stepchildren. All of my stepchildren hated me. They didn't dislike me. They hated me. And that was an appropriate way to feel about me because of the way I treated them. I could not, I did not have any idea how to be compassionate or loving or kind. I was none of those things.
None of them. I have become all of those things, thanks to you. I've become all those things. I have a really good, good group of friends, most of whom, many of whom, I really think I would take a bullet for. You know, I had no interest in you when I got here. You know, you never know what you'll really do until it's time to do it, and then you're going to stand up and do it or you're not. So would I take a bullet for them?
I don't know. But I think so. I really believe I would. I had a young lady come up to me a while back, and this is one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. She said, I have a daddy-sized hole in my heart. Would you be my daddy? And he's like, That don't happen to me, let me tell you. And I said, Of course I would. Of course I would. And you know what? I have become a killer father. That's what you've done with me. I didn't do that.
You did that. My daughter, I call her my daughter now. She calls me Daddy. And she's 38 years old. She's not a kid. And every morning, she sends me a text message. You know, if you're a kid these days, if you have children in your life or young people in your life and you don't know how to text, you're not going to communicate with them. They don't answer phones, none of that. You text or you don't communicate. That's it.
So I get a text message every morning from her. It says, Good morning, Papa. How you doing? And every night, the last thing she does before she goes to bed, she sends me another text message that says, Night-night, Daddy. Sleep well. Sweet dreams. You know, I didn't do that. I couldn't do that in a million years. You did that. Alcoholics Anonymous did that. So I look now at the spectrum of my life.
You know, one minute I'm at some place with a bunch of hard-nosed guys, and I'm telling them the truth. Said, yeah, I don't know how you feel. This all sounds like a bunch of hooey. You know, things aren't going too well for you right now. Why don't you give it a try? You know, check it out. It's okay. And those guys all smiled, and to a man, almost to a man, they came up and shook my hand when I was through talking to them.
They said, We're really glad you came. Thanks. And I just told them about you. That's all I ever do anymore, just tell them about you, and tell them what I was like, what happened, what it's like now. What it's like now. And that seems to be enough. That just seems to be enough. I am, I am Alcoholics Anonymous is beyond my very wildest, wildest dreams.
[00:45:05]
I am a human being. I could never be, never be without you. And I am so grateful to you. I am so grateful to you for making my life worthwhile, for giving me a life that I really enjoy, and for teaching me that most important, perhaps one of the most important things that I know about our program, and that is, if you want to keep it, Dave, you got to go give it away. And I believe that's true. I love you all very much.
Thank you.