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Source: DICOBE-00423 – Joe P – BLUESTONE WEST VIRGINIA RNDP – 1980-10-17.mp3 File: dicobe-00423-joe-p-bluestone-west-virginia-rndp-1980-10-17.mp3 Duration: 00:51:36
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I have sat where you're sitting tonight so many times in the program of Alcoholic Anonymous, not knowing which way to turn, and I've listened to the stories of my fellow members of this program. And to me, God spoke to me in the meetings. He used speakers as his emissary to talk to me. So this is a tremendous responsibility to stand at this rostrum, because for the next 50 or 55 minutes I'm going to be playing with many of your lives. And this is an onus responsibility, because before God I must be truthful, I must be honest. I can't exaggerate, but I've got to tell you exactly how it was, how it is now, and what happened on the way.
I was born in 1925 in Worcester, Massachusetts. And before you run out of fingers and toes, I'm 55 years old. I was born the son of Irish immigrant parents, a mother that could not read or write, and a father who was a college professor. But I was brought into a family and into a neighborhood that, as far back as I can remember, and the only time I ever went back this far in my own mind, was in my fourth step. And I recall as a young man I didn't like being a member of that family, because my father talked with an Irish brogue and that embarrassed me. And we were Roman Catholics growing up in a neighborhood of Protestant people, and I would have rather been Protestant. But we were very religious people, at least my parents were. And I never had any communication with my mother or my father.
They were good people. I'm sure they loved each other, but they didn't know how to express their love. My father lived to be 93 years old and my mother was 82. And I never once saw my father kiss my mother on the lips. I never kissed my father on the lips. I never knew how to love, and I never knew how to express love. But I wanted to please my father and my mother so much. And everything in their life was centered around the Catholic Church. That was their social life.
That was their family life. And so at a young age of 16, I joined the Jesuit order to become a Roman Catholic priest. And for nine long years I studied to be a priest. I took my vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. And I was motivated by the desire to be looked up to as a clergyman, rather than a motivation of doing this for the love of God. But I was reasonably happy, because I was doing God's will. And in those formation years, I was taught day after day that someday I was going to be in that world, but I couldn't be a part of that world. And I was sent out to teach at Fairfield University. And I taught Latin and Greek. I was assistant dean of men. And I remember how I began to change, and how I forget this lesson of formative years, that I was going to be in the world, but I couldn't be a part of this world. And slowly, materialistic things started to outweigh the spiritual. Women became very beautiful. People my age had children. They had new cars. They had nice homes. So I was to be dispensed from my vows, I was. And overnight, I became a man of the world. So I left Fairfield University and took a train to New York City. And I got out at Grand Central Station into the asphalt jungle. And I took a subway to the Bronx. And I remember I was the only one in that subway on a Sunday night. And I took collar, my Roman collar, and I took it off, and I hid it behind a fan on that subway and pulled
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my shirt on the outside of my collar. And I was now a man of the world. And I went around New York for a short time, and I wasn't happy. I wasn't getting any public acclaim. I had many needs. So I joined the Army. And I joined the 82nd Airborne. You see, I didn't know anything about the Airborne, but I liked their boots. And I liked the scarf they wore and how people kind of looked up to them because they looked sharp. I was going away to study to be a priest to please somebody else. And now I was going to be able to get acclaimed by me and a member of the 82nd Airborne. But I want to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that transition from the monastery to the 82nd Airborne is one hell of a transition. Somehow in the military, they asked for sugar in a different way than they did in the monastery. And while I was in the 82nd Airborne, I married.
I was assigned to Fort Benning. And after six weeks of courtship, I married a young lady from Macon, Georgia. Now, my career in the Army was not too long. When things get kind of rough in the Army, I remembered that I had fallen arches and I put in for a medical discharge. Now, after the Army, if you had sat with me in one of the numerous bars in which I sat night after night, my Army career would have been different. It would have gone this way. Yes, I'm a college graduate. What rank were you in the Army? I was a major. Well, really, I was a corporal. How many jumps did you make? 76. I made 13. Where did you spend your time in the Army? In Korea. I never left Fort Benning. My whole life was different. It had to be made up of something different from what it was. So I got out of the Army and I went into the broadcasting business and I went back to Worcester, Massachusetts and I became the voice of Holy Cross College. And I did the news every night at 11 o'clock on the radio and then became a habit that was going to stay with me for years and years and years. The habit of not going home after work, of going to the local pub, of sitting there on the stools each night, being something that I was not, telling stories and trying to please and trying to impress and spending the long night hours with the comfort of alcohol. You see, even then, alcohol did something for me that it wasn't doing for a lot of people. All of a sudden, alcohol made me feel equal to other people. It did away with a lot of my fears. It did away with the reality of my life, let me live in a fantasy world. I was now a husband and I was a father. And the children were coming one after the other until ultimately there were six, five boys and a girl. And I was a well-educated man, educated along the lines of theology and philosophy, the classics. But I was never educated along the lines of reality. I didn't know how to be a father. I didn't know how to be a husband. And I didn't like being a father. And I didn't like being a husband because I couldn't cope with it. I couldn't cope with life. And every night of my life I drank. And we decided that I had to get away from those people in Massachusetts. They were a bad influence on me. They drew me to that bar each night. And they were the reason that I drank night after night. They were a bad influence on me. So I went 1,100 miles to Savannah, Georgia. And I moved to Tybee Island just out of Savannah.
And I said, this drinking is going to stop. And I was there about eight hours and I found a place at Tybee Beach that stayed open until four o'clock in the morning. And I found a new set of guys, guys that would lie to each other and talk about baseball and talk about religion and settle all the problems of the world. And I grew further and further away from this family. Five boys and had
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nothing in common with them. I never learned how to love them. But now I was in television. And now I could be the real me. I could walk down the street and people would say, hi Joe, how are you? They knew me. I could go in and cash a check any place I wanted to because they knew me. I wore two faces, a face for the public and a face for my family. The personality was what the public knew. The character was what my family knew. And I couldn't impress my family, so I had to impress the public. And that caused a civil war to rage inside me because I was living a hypocritical dual life. And I couldn't stand that. So I moved again and this time I moved to Columbia, South Carolina. That was 12 years ago. And once again I was in television. And the ego was beginning to grow. And I reached new heights in television as I became the voice of the South Carolina Gamecocks. And that became the most important thing in my life. I hardly knew my children. I recall that life was changing so much for me that I didn't know what was happening to me. But I know I had to have alcohol. I had to have more and more of it. At this time I was waking up in the morning full of anxiety and full of fear, highly pressurized. And I went to my doctor and I told him that my nerves were falling apart. And he introduced me to another little glorious thing in my life, a tiny little pill called Valium. A little yellow pill that I didn't have to drink before I went on the air. When I arose in the morning I could take my Valium. And I was up to about 20 milligrams a day. Not too bad. But I got tired in the afternoon and sleepy. And I had to impress these people every night on the air. So then I found another little pill on my own. One that made me feel euphoric. And that was called Darvon. So in the morning it was the Valium. In the afternoon was the Darvon. And after work at night was the vodka. Now the vodka was also a phase of progression. It went from beer to bourbon to scotch to vodka. Not all that means anything.
But I've seen a lot of us that kind of end up on vodka. Now in between there were a few stages where I tried to make that dramatic switch to beer. Because that was going to make me all right. But it never did. Drinking a can of beer for me was like smoking a cigar when you wanted a cigarette. Nothing ever satisfied me but the vodka. And this went on for years. This Valium, the Darvon of the vodka. And I remember those days that I was afraid of the word alcoholism. I wasn't an alcoholic. I wasn't drinking in the morning. I wasn't an alcoholic. I still had a job. I'd never been picked up for a DUI. I hadn't slept under the bridge and I was making comparisons. But I was afraid to read about alcoholism. If I saw an article in the Reasons Digest on alcoholism, I'd switch and I wouldn't look at it. Because deep down I knew I had a serious problem. And there were all these personality changes in my life. Because of my theological background I was invited on Sunday as a TV personality to speak in a Baptist Church. And I remember standing before a group talking to them on Christian family traditions. Then I went home and got drunk and broke up the furniture. And that's sick. And my wife at the time became a professional. She became an anesthetist. She had to start a way in life for herself because I presented no security. And they moved 50 miles down the road to a tiny town called Walterboro, South Carolina. But we lied about that to the children. We said they were moving down there for financial reasons. I had three in college at one time. And this was better with support because she could make more money in this town. But this family was moving to get away from me. They couldn't stand me.
away from me, they couldn't stand me, and I built up a wall between that family, a wall
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that said, don't come close to me, don't find out what's going on inside, and I came home each weekend to Walterboro, and I came home intoxicated, and I recall those trips home as I rode down I-26 to I-95, and I'd walk in that house each night, and as I look back it's disgusting and sickening, because I never asked one of those kids how they were, the self-centeredness had taken over, and it was always, why the hell didn't you cut the grass, why didn't you empty the garbage, everything, why didn't you do it for me, and they were lost weekends, and the weekends were getting worse. I was living in a tiny little house in Columbia by myself, and now my drinking was taking place, instead of quitting at one o'clock in the morning, the sun was finding me in my chair, and finally one night a knock came on the door, and a young fellow about 17 years old presented the TV star with a blue paper, the blue paper was headlined, Beverly versus Joe P., and the number one accusation was, you're no longer needed in our household, you don't contribute a thing to it, because of your habitual use of alcohol, you've added nothing to the peace and harmony of this home, and I looked at that, and I lied about it, and I was upset, and I threw it to the ground, because I said, I've contributed everything to this family, and I had, I'd not contributed materially, but I never continued to contribute a thing spiritually, I was never a father, I was never a friend, I was a sick alcoholic, but I said, I'll fool this family, I don't need them, so I moved out of this tiny house, and I went to this Taj Mahal apartment house in Columbia, Middleburg Apartments, I always wanted to live there, beautiful on the outside, they had a doorman, they had a beautiful restaurant, they had a cocktail lounge, they had a lot of successful divorced people living in that apartment house, so I moved into a beautiful apartment, much more than I could afford, and now I thought I'd found happiness, because I was away from that family, I was alone with my pills and my vodka and my divorced women and my gambling, I was alone with myself. On Christmas Day of that year, I sat alone in my living room, and no one called, and no one came by to see me, and it was at that time I had a spiritual awakening, I think, because at that time I realized that my life was going down the drain, and I took a little assessment of what I had in life, and I looked at this apartment, and it reminded me of me, the outside, it looked pretty good, it bore no scars, but on the inside, like the inside of my apartment, like the inside of my character, there was nothing. I looked around my little apartment, and I looked at that refrigerator, and it was a beautiful refrigerator, but inside there was a half a quart of sour milk, six cans of beer, and some shriveled up hot dogs. I'd never used the garbage dispenser, never used the washer, never used the dryer. I had six pieces of furniture from Metro Lease, a car that belonged to the company, and the clothes in my back, and on Christmas Day I had nothing, and I tried to take my life, and I wasn't successful at that either. I was crying out for help. I was lost, and I thought I had all the answers, and I was trying to find a way, and alcohol was the only way that I knew. And I was dating a woman in that apartment house, and she was a beautiful woman. She was a year or two older than I am, and I used to go to see her every night, and I'd bring my bottle with me, and she never drank, and she couldn't see me on Tuesday or Thursday nights because I thought she went to church, but she went to a meeting, and she never criticized me for drinking alcohol, but I drank in front of her constantly, and after six months of going with this girl, she called me one night about two o'clock in the morning, and I was half sober, and I went by there, and something had happened to this girl. Her beauty was
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gone. She was allergic to alcohol, and she'd taken a drink. She'd been a member of Alcoholic Anonymous, and she was drinking. She went away to a treatment center for a short time and came back, and I continued the relationship, and she continued to drink, and she was the only thing in my life at that time, and I told her I couldn't stand to live with her because I found that one alcoholic finds it very difficult to live with another alcoholic who's still drinking. So I told her it was all over, and I went my merry way, and two days later I was in the bank. I was getting ready to go to Omaha, Nebraska to do the College World Series, and my doctor's wife came up to me and said, Joe, too bad about Ann, and I said, what's wrong with Ann? She said, I'm sorry, Ann died last night. You see, Ann was taking Antabuse, and she drank, and she died, and I ran. I ran to Omaha, Nebraska. I didn't even go to her funeral because I felt the guilt that perhaps I was an influence turning her back to alcohol. Today I don't feel guilty about that because maybe it had to be, but I went to Omaha, Nebraska, and that was the worst week of my life. I drank every night, and I did the poorest job on television I'd ever done in 27 years, and I was sick, and I wanted to end it all. I came back to Columbia, and I dated a few times my present wife, Margaret, and she met me at the airport, and she met a man that looked like he had slept under the bridge. I had traveled all night. I was drinking. My life was absolutely meaningless.
And we decided we'd go to Savannah, Georgia for a few days, and we went back to Savannah, to Tybee Beach, and I drank very heavily, and I used Margaret, and I abused her because I thought I could use her to get me back on the track. I thought she was a wealthy woman, and I'd used a lot of wealthy women because, you see, I had a habit of lying to women. I had a very poor estimate of women, and I thought that their role in life was to use them and abuse them. I asked Margaret to marry me, and she said, sure. So we went across the South Carolina state line from Georgia, went to a Justice for the Peace, and we were married, and I was intoxicated, and this was the lowest point in my life because this was sacrilegious. We became a part of an assembly line of people. They were taking vows before God that they were going to live the rest of their lives together as husbands and wives, and I put my hand on that Bible, and as drunk as I was, I knew it was a mockery, and as we headed back toward Columbia on I-95, my mind began to clear up a little bit, and I realized what I had done. You know, I dreamt things like that, of getting married to someone I didn't know, and we struck up a conversation, and perhaps it was the most serious conversation of our courtship, and now we were married, and I said, Margaret, how many children did you say you had? And she said, five, and I had six, and that makes eleven, and I hadn't met her children. I was going to move into her house because she had a beautiful home, a hundred thousand dollar home in the suburbs of Columbia. She had a beautiful car. We were riding in her car. She had just about everything, and you'll hear her part of the story on Sunday morning.
And I moved into that house, and I was introduced to her kids, and I didn't like them, and they didn't like me either. And the next morning, a guy showed up at the door, and he informed me that that wasn't Margaret's house. He was her former husband, and that was his house, and once she had married, she abandoned all her rights to that house, and to add insult to injury, he drove the car out as he left because he was a car dealer, and that was his car too. Well, we batted around for about three
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months, and I moved out, and I moved in, and we both stayed drunk, and it was a sacrilegious union, and I finally left the last time, and she went to the beach, and I followed her down there, and we said, we've got to do something about the way we're living. This is a mockery, and I wanted to have that marriage annulled because it bothered me. And she said, I've tried something that can help us with our drinking. She said, years ago, I went to the program of Alcoholic Anonymous. I said, what's that all about? She said, well, I don't know. You go there, and they take 12 steps, and then they're all right. I said, well, you go and take those 12 steps, and if it's all right by you, then I'll look at it.
Well, we went home that Sunday, and we went to a meeting of Alcoholic Anonymous on Sunday morning, and I'll never forget that Sunday morning. In my town of Columbia, where I knew everybody, the celebrity, the guy that was on the back of taxicab's picture on the billboards and on the screen every night, Mr. Successful got out of his car that morning at Alcoholic Anonymous, and I was embarrassed, so I wore sunglasses. I was going to walk in there with all those winos. Maybe I'd give them a talk that morning. I could give them a talk on Christian family traditions. But I went in there because Margaret was in serious trouble, and I had to do something for her. And I went into that club, and I met a few of the people. We went into a private office, and we talked about Margaret's problems. And finally, we went to a meeting, and it was a discussion meeting, and I don't remember many of the things that were said, but I can remember looking around that room, and I saw people there that I hadn't seen in years, people who I thought had died, because they no longer frequented the same places that I did. And I was impressed, because nobody seemed to be impressed that I was there. And nobody was surprised that I was there. And Margaret stood up, and in South Carolina, we have the white chip to signify that we have a desire to give up drinking. And she stood up, and she took her white chip. And they clapped, and they clapped for Margaret, because I could see they loved her. And I wasn't going to let her get that applause, so I stood up, and I took one, too. That day, I went through the horrors of hell, because it was a Sunday, and I wanted to drink. But I had told three fellows at that meeting that I would go to another meeting that night in Camden. And my ego wouldn't let me drink that day and let those guys smell it on my breath.
Three fellows at that meeting that I would go to another meeting that night in Camden. And my ego wouldn't let me drink that day and let those guys smell it on my breath. So we went to Camden that night, and I heard a young attorney talk. And he had a bunch of kids, and he talked about how his life was alienated from his children, how he ate Valium, how he ate Darvon, how he drank vodka. Things he said were things that were locked inside of me that I thought would only happen to me. And I went home that night, and I picked up this book of Alcoholic Anonymous.
And I remember reading The Doctor's Opinion, Roman numeral 23, second edition. And for the first time in my life, I began to see my life in print. You see, I realized that I had a physical allergy to alcohol, and I had a mental obsession. I had to drink. I knew I was self-centered. I knew I was selfish. But when I looked in the mirror, I also knew that paradox that talks about in the big book, that I couldn't stand myself, and I hated myself.
And I took to this program of Alcoholic Anonymous like a starving man. And I'm not ashamed to say I went to a lot more than 90 meetings in 99 days. Came to say I went to a lot more than 90 meetings in 90 days, and I read everything I could
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get my hands on, and I realized that for the first time in my life I was associated with people that loved me, that people were going to take me the way I am. For the first time in my life I realized I belong. Now, just a year before this I was a fourth degree member of the Knights of Columbus, and I got sick of that so I joined the Masons. I was the only man in Columbia, South Carolina, a member of the Masons, the Knights of Columbus, Rotary and Kiwanis at the same time, because that was the only way I could feed my ego, and I never felt like I belonged. But all of a sudden I was with plumbers and truck drivers, guys that came to meetings with dirty shirts and grease on their hands, and they were telling me how to live, and what they said makes sense. They told me to shut up. They told me when it was my time to talk they'd let me know. And I didn't impress anybody because I was a television star. I didn't impress a soul. And I had resentments against a lot of those fellows. They'd say beautiful things, things I needed to hear, but I'd get resentments because they used poor English. They told me I had to change. And I fell in love with this program. I fell in love with it almost immediately. And I found out what was wrong with me. I found out that before I ever took a drop of liquor I wasn't right. I was full of fear, full of anxiety. I was a selfish guy that looked out for my own interests only.
I never felt like I belonged. And when I drank it was the greatest equalizer in my life because the fears would go momentarily. The anxiety would go. And I could live in my fantasy world. But now I put the cork in the jug and I thought it was going to be all right, but it wasn't. Because what I discovered was the same guy that was there before I ever took a drink. My alcohol and my pills were nothing but a symptom of my alcoholism. My alcoholism was I was different. I was emotionally immature. I was selfish. I was self-centered. I was absolutely frightened. And this is where I found myself. Fifty years of age with the mind of a sixteen-year-old or a fifteen-year-old boy. And once again I was afraid of marriage.
And I was afraid of my job. And I still had to impress other people. So I used this program to impress other people. And I wasn't in the program very long and I started to be invited to speaking engagements. And God, how I loved that. Because I used this program to inflate my ego. And I didn't do much looking at myself, but I continued to stay sober. And finally I got a sponsor who told me, Joe, if you're going to stay sober, you've got to change. You can put the cork in the bottle, but you've got to change if you're going to keep it there. You've got to have that psychic change that Bill Wilson talks about. The psychic change from being selfish and self-centered to a person that's motivated by the program of Alcoholic Anonymous to change. He said, Joe, you know more about this program than any man I know from knowledge. But you work it less than anybody I've ever known.
Now I had no trouble admitting my life was unmanageable. And I really had a deep-sense feeling that I was powerless over alcohol. And when I asked that power greater than myself to restore me to sanity, it was not the insanity of being drunk, the crazy things I did drinking. It was the insanity of my thinking, the self-centered thinking, the insanity of thinking that I was going to be able to drink again, that someday I might be able to control my drinking.
And I took that second step. And life became a little better. But life didn't change until
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I had a spiritual awakening with the third step. When I made that decision, it turned my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand Him. And I stood on the shore of Atlantic Ocean in Folly Beach outside of Charleston, South Carolina. And I'm not ashamed to admit my faults, because God spoke to me through the stars and the ocean. And I looked at God's creation, and for the first time in my life, I realized that I was a child of God. But I was insignificant. And as insignificant as I was, I was more powerful than that Atlantic Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean with all its power and all its majesty. It ebbs and flows twice a day along the whole East Coast with such regularity that it can be pinpointed in every newspaper in the country. A sun that rises in the morning, pinpointed to its exact time, a sun that's just the right million miles away, that it doesn't burn me up or doesn't allow me to freeze to death. I looked at nature, and I saw all its majesty, its symmetry, its mathematics, its perfect harmony. And it was then I realized that everything that God had made was doing His will, and everything was in harmony, and everything was in peace.
And I wasn't at peace. I wasn't in harmony with the will of God. Because, you see, my will was nonexistent. I did not will to be an alcoholic. I did not will to be a drunken bum. But I had no control over my own will. And so the program very wisely told me to take this will and turn it over to the will of God. And my life, too, like the ocean and the stars and the sun, could be in harmony with its maker. And I made that decision, and I've taken it back so many times. But making that decision has prompted me toward change. Life has changed for me, and I'm in a process of change. And this process I know is going to go on until the day I die. Just like the trees in this beautiful God's cathedral outside here today. They're more beautiful today because they've reached their maturity and they're ready to die. I am a process of change. I'm not in that process of maturity, and perhaps I won't be until I'm ready to die. But I have to struggle, and it's a daily struggle, but it's a challenge, and it's exciting, and it's beautiful to be sober and try to make myself in perfect harmony with the will of God. Life for me was a new car, a blonde who might belong to somebody else, a trunk full of booze and a weekend at Hilton Head.
That is where for 25 or 27 years I sought my happiness. And it was just two years ago that everything that I ridiculed in my life turned around to be the most fulfilling thing that I've ever experienced. Here was the blonde that got ugly on the way home, the trunk was empty, the master charge had 350 more dollars, and I was miserable. And now, just a year later, I found fulfillment. And I found it in the basement of a Methodist church with my wife and my family, my new family, at a coveted supper run of the offices of the program of Alcoholic Anonymous. Alcoholic Anonymous became my life. And what happened to that first family? They are coming back slowly. My oldest son is a student for a doctorate at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. My daughter is married, she's adopted twins, she had a
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child of her own. And I held that baby two weeks ago, the first time I ever held a baby sober. And there was a feeling toward that child that I've never had in my life, one that I've never had for my own children, because my children were nothing but a liability. My other sons, they speak, and they're coming back slowly. I've tried to make amends, but the way they receive those amends is really not important. The fact that I'm making them is the most important. Margaret and I have been married going on four years. What is it like now? This is a miracle. This is another one of those miracles that you see in the programs of Alcoholic Anonymous. We've grown together in this program, and once again we're into a home that's our own, that we earned, equally as nice as the one I was kicked out of. We have a new car. I've never wanted for a thing since I've been in this program.
Never for a thing. I'm not wealthy, but I've got everything that I need. We still have two of the little children at home, they're Margaret's children. I can recall that they were so frightened that they used to run and hide in the closets, because life with alcohol was mean to these kids. But now they come and they kiss me before they go to bed at night, and I'm building a relationship with them. And this is one of the toughest things that ever happened. The guilt I felt for living with another man's family, when I became conscious of what I had done to my own. My sponsor told me, live with that family, learn to love those children, because God has given you a second chance. And they'd always use this word, love. And I didn't know what they were talking about, because I'd never felt the emotion of love. I have felt the emotion of lust, but never of love. But there's love in our home today. I love Margaret, and Margaret loves me. And it's not a fairytale, because life is not easy. You know, when two alcoholics live together, when both of us are practicing our programs, everything is beautiful. If one of us is practicing, it's not too bad, but if neither one of us is practicing, it's hell. And it has to become hell once in a while to get back practicing the program. You see, I'm not a saint, and I'm a long way from it. I have progressed about this far in the program of Alcoholic Anonymous. I'm not drinking alcohol, I'm not taking pills, I'm chemically free. But for the first time in my life, at least I'm recognizing my character defects, and I'm trying to change and do something about them. And it's discouraging sometimes. I'm not always happy, but where in the book of Alcoholic Anonymous does it say or guarantee that we'll always be happy? The biggest change in my life is that I'm able to cope with life. The biggest change in my life is that I'm trying to do the will of God. And I know that I grow spiritually insofar as I do the will of God. And you've taught me something about humility. Humility, that secret ingredient that allows me to do God's will instead of my own. And life has taken on a new meaning.
And on April the 1st of this year, I was able to say, Mr. Television, it's time that the lights go out.
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It's a program and a business for young people, and maybe God has something else designed for you in life. And my position today is working with recovering alcoholics in a treatment center. And I tried in the beginning to do that on Ego Too, and I found out that didn't work too well. But I love what I'm doing, and I've been trained for what I'm doing, because I haven't seen one of my people experience a single thought that I don't understand.
I trained nine years to hear confessions, and it was just two years ago that I sat in my house one night with a fellow that had been sober for a year, and he asked me to take his fifth step. We sat there for nearly four and a half hours, and that man poured out his soul to me, and I could identify with everything he said. And after it was over, we hugged each other like two kids, and tears streamed down his face.
The next morning he left my house, because he was living in a halfway house, and he had a job, and he had an apartment. And less than twelve hours after he took his fifth step, my phone rang, and another member of the fellowship said, Joe, I want to tell you, Al just dropped dead. I felt good, because that man is with God. I've never heard such humility. Nothing has ever done so much for me as hearing that man's fifth step.
You see, I identified with everything he did. Some of the things I didn't do, but God knows I thought about them and could have done them. What is life like today? Today life is not easy, and it never is guaranteed to be easy. But I've abandoned myself to the God of my understanding, and that God of understanding is altogether different from the theological God I'd been taught as a young man. See, this God is not waiting for me to do something immoral and snuff out my life at a railroad track.
This God is a God of love that says, Joe, all I ask you is to try. Keep on trying. And I find God in this very room, the God of my understanding, because the God of my understanding is love. And there's love in this room. I can look into your faces, and I see the clear whites of your eyes, and they say the eyes are the mirror of your soul. And all but about a ten people in this room I've never met before, but I haven't said a single thing here tonight that you don't understand.
And I doubt if you'll say anything that I don't understand, because we've been there. We've been at the bottom of the barrel, and the whole world laughed at us and thought we were having fun. But tonight I can stand here with all the honesty I can command and say, I'm happy I'm an alcoholic, because my recovering is exciting. It's like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer. It feels good when you're stuck.
But life has taken on a new meaning. I'm the head of the household in my house, and I love those little girls, and I love my grandchild, and I'm beginning to love my children. And I love my wife, and we're beginning to grow together with separate programs. Today I walked down this mountainside, down to this beautiful lake, and we spoke in whispers because in this God's cathedral with the murals of colors, I felt so fortunate, and it was
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just a little bit of heaven. What is my God like? My God is like this weekend, because He's a God of justice and a God of love. I don't have the fear that I used to have, I don't have the anxiety that I used to have, because you're helping me with that. You're helping me with that through your love. And I see God in your faces, and that's why we're going to have a good weekend this weekend, because each one of us has abandoned ourselves to God.
We're clearing away the wreckage of the past, and hand in hand we're going to walk down life's journey together. There are no strangers in the program of Alcoholic Anonymous. I feel your love. I hope you feel mine. To the committee, thank you for inviting us here. I'm not proud of my story, but I have pride in my recovery. Your love is warm, and I love each one of you. God bless you.