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Source: Don L – From Bellingham, Washington – Date Unknown.mp3 File: don-l-from-bellingham-washington-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:09:21
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Hi, everybody. I'm Don L.. I'm an alcoholic. Yeah, it's been a long day. I'm absolutely delighted to be here. And yeah, I got up very early. And, you know, I live in Bellingham, Washington. And if you don't know where Bellingham is, we're about 100 miles north of Seattle, about 20 miles south of the Canadian border. We like to think of ourselves as the first line of defense against Canada, so. And so to get to the airport, I got to get up to catch a 6 a.m. flight. We're going to do a little exercise here in Alcoholics Anonymous.
We want to do this, but we're going to do it tonight. I'm going to say something and everybody go, oh, okay, ready? So I got up at 1.30 this morning. And I had to drive two hours to the airport. And then I flew all the way to Detroit. And then my plane was to life four and a half hours. Nobody cares. This is AA. If I was sitting out there, I'd be, whatever, dude, did you drink? But I'm excited that I get to speak on this date, April 10th. This is a big day in our history. You know, April 10th, 1939, first publication date of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. 4,730 copies came off the presses with all the wrong motives in the world. Bill's starving to death. He's thinking, put this thing, I'll take this chip of a book and we'll launch it on the tide of alcoholism and we'll save all those lives. And we'll make a lot of money, which wouldn't be a bad thing because we'll do good with it, won't we, God? And that was Bill's intention. And that was the beginning.
And we are so fortunate that God oversaw this thing. And I know God runs AA. You know, I know without a doubt that God, as I understand him, runs Alcoholics Anonymous. And if you don't believe me, take a moment, look to the person to your left or right. We couldn't do this. You know what I mean? Very obvious to me. And our whole history is full of examples of God running AA because the book was a dismal failure, dismal failure. How bad a failure was it that when we went to buy back stock that we oversold, people were only too happy to get their original investment back. They didn't even care about making money. We'll give you your money back. That'd be terrific. Take that lousy book and get it away from me. And who would have thought that a guy named Don would be standing in a podium in eerie Pennsylvania so many years later, you know, fighting back the tears for what's inside me, for what's happened to me in Alcoholics Anonymous because of a book you couldn't give away back in 1939. How many of us get to walk free today? And how many people have yet to experience Alcoholics Anonymous, yet to experience the touch of the Creator, that don't know what it's like to walk on the sunny side of the street, that are going to come to Alcoholics Anonymous, are going to get to read that same book and experience that same gift of identification that I experienced as a new man. Reading that text and going, how did they know? It was so long ago. I felt like that. I did that. They were telling my story. The big book means so much to me because I was so shut down. And the book talks about that too. The less people tolerated us, the more we withdrew from them, from life itself. And I had experienced that where I was just shut out from the human race. I wanted nothing to do with people. You were too much trouble. I'd hurt too many of you. And that's who came into Alcoholics Anonymous. So to be able to be given a big book by my first sponsor and sit in the dark of my room that I'm mooching off of my family with my life torn to shreds, broken in half, and to turn those pages and read those words and experience that identification, it saved my life. Because before I could hear what you had to tell me, the first hundred men and women of Alcoholics Anonymous told me their stories and were able to save my life and buy me another day in sobriety. Because I thought for the first time in my life I had met a group of people that knew how I felt. And I had never experienced that before. So I say, you know, here's to Alcoholics Anonymous and the big book, Program of Alcoholics Anonymous on its anniversary. It's a wonderful thing. And just because I'm nosy, can I see the hands of the people in their first year of sobriety that are here?
First year? Wow, that's great. Fantastic. Wow. That's great. You are so welcome here. You know, if you're in your first year of sobriety, we are delighted you are here. But we also know if you're in your first year of sobriety, you may not be so delighted that you are here. It's tough to be new in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, because you're surrounded by a bunch of teeth and hands and everybody's happy and they got the gift in place because
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they've had the psychic change. You know what I mean? They've done the work. They've
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worked the steps. And they're just having too good a time. And these really happy, shiny people extend themselves to you and they say things that are just insane when you're like, oh, I've been just where you have. And you're thinking, no, you haven't. You know, because we're liars in Alcoholics Anonymous. We do say things to new people. We do. We lie. We say things. It's going to be okay. We don't know that. Hey, we're hoping you come back so we can see what will happen, you know. When I came to AA, there were show-offs too, man. There were show-offs all over the place. I mean, just rubbing my nose in it. They had stuff I could never even aspire to ever owning like, I don't know, like a driver's license, you know. And there'd be an address in the driver's license and if you went there, they lived there. That's just piling on. So if you're new, we do know a great deal about you. I know you don't believe that. You think, how could you know anything about me? You haven't even talked to me yet. Well, we do know. We've been here a long time. We know that nobody's really unique. We know a great deal about the new man or woman. For instance, we know this hasn't been a good year. So if you're new in Alcoholics Anonymous, let me make you the guarantee that they made me. Join us. Come with us. Go with us. Do what we do. Go where we go and we guarantee you we have no idea what's going to happen to you. But more importantly, we guarantee you it'll be significantly better than anything you've ever had. And that's the guarantee they made to me and it's different. This is not the life I would have picked for myself. My life on a daily basis, thinking about the guy that came in Alcoholics Anonymous and what my life looks like today, it's kind of a lame life. It's kind of like Lifetime movie, kind of weenie. I like to open bar doors with my head. I like to say intelligent things right before I go to the ER like, hey, watch this. I like to see if it really is non-flammable. You know what I mean? And I got a sweet life today. You know, I live with a beautiful woman. I met her in Alcoholics Anonymous. We've been married 18 years, been together for 20 years. Boy meets girl on AA campus, you know. And I just love my life. Eileen, got a great dog. His name's Bo, Bo the Wonder Dog. You know, we just roll around, live in a beautiful place by the fourth largest lake in the state, you know. And sometimes I just, I get it, you know, not all the time. That's the problem, you know, and I love that in the book. It talks about how what cuts God away from a guy like me. Palm, circumstances, worship of other things, worldly clamors, you know, I work for a living, I got responsibilities, go, go, go, busy in AA. And sometimes I forget how good it is, you know, right now, right here with you, just being sober. Just, I'm not in the grinder anymore. I'm not looking over my shoulder. I'm not trying to remember my lies. I'm not trying to alphabeticalize them. I've just got, you know, but I still complain. It's like the spectator sport of the alcoholic. You know, we just like to complain, you know, and the truth of the matter is, if the newcomer version of me was to show up in my life today and listen to the things that I have the audacity to complain about from time to time, he'd kick my ass. Because it's crazy. It's not that I have quality problems.
I just have problems. I didn't have problems before. I have situations. It's wonderful to have situations. I had life and death struggles before I got here. Now it's like, it's like I have a job. I have a wife. I look lame. I just know that people let me into their homes, you know what I mean? I'm in a service industry. I do sales. I make appointments. They're happy to see me. I have a business card with my face on it. And they invite me in. Can I get you something to drink, Donald? And they're nice. And old habits die hard, I got to admit. You know, I walk in, I go, God, Mrs. Abernathy, this is a lovely home you have here. And I'm, and I can't help it. My head goes, God, they don't even have an alarm system. I just, I just, I don't mean to see it, but I see it. You know, it's like, you know, I haven't been struck honest. I'm more like that Mark Twain quote. You know,
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it's one of my favorite quotes. Mark Twain said, it's said that Washington could not tell a lie. I have to subscribe to a higher principle. I can lie, but won't. And that's Alcoholics Anonymous because we can do it all. You know what I mean? We're not impressed when you come in here with your 27 and a half felonies and your 16 and a quarter DUIs. We're like, yeah, big deal. You know, polite society, that scares them. You know what I mean? Here, I mean, we're just a different kind of society. I mean, this is the only place you'll find where people fall in love, get married, doesn't work out, get divorced. A few years later, get married to the same person. And the other members think it's a good idea. We go to sponsors with three divorces for marital advice. I mean, it's good advice, you know. I grew up in Los Angeles, Hollywood specifically. Alcoholic home, my mom's alcoholism, deadbeat dad, two years old, dad got off the couch, said he was going out for a pack of smokes, never saw him again. Gang infested neighborhood, a lot of, I don't know if you know a lot about Hollywood. Hollywood's the kind of place like, you ever drive down the street and you see something really unusual and you say to yourself, wow, there's something you don't see every day. You don't say that in Hollywood because you see it every day. In the neighborhood I grew up in was like, I don't know, gangs and pimps and hustlers and drug addicts and alcoholics and it was wonderful, you know. Just a, what a wonderful playground for a budding alcoholic to grow up in. You know, you feel like you didn't get the rule book to life, you feel like you're a day late and a dollar short, you feel like you don't fit in, move to Hollywood. They won't notice, they really won't. And I'm not a guy that picked up a fifth of Jack Daniels at age 12 and went on a crime spree, not my story, you know. For the, it's funny, Sandy Beach used to say that the longer he was sober, the better his childhood would get and that's, God, that's absolutely my story. Because I came in here just filled with victimization. I was the perfect victim, you know, and the problem about being an alcoholic and a victim is every drink you take, you take with impunity because it's really not your fault. It was that mom's alcoholism and it was that dad that left and it was that tough neighborhood and it's having a new uncle every three months and my mom being passed out drunk naked on the floor and having to go buy that at seven years old to get some Cheerios. I was quick to tell you those stories. And I wanted something to happen when I told you those stories, you know, hopefully somebody would feel sorry for me. And, you know, when people feel sorry for me, that's the kissing cousin, the self-pity.
I just love it. If I can't feel good, I will take feeling bad in a second. And when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I was convinced my problem wasn't drinking, it was that family I came from. If you came from the family I came from and saw the things I saw as a kid growing up, you'd drink the way I drank. So, don't be so quick to judge me until you've walked a mile in my shoes. But then a funny thing happens in AA when you get a sponsor.
Because if you get a sponsor and you're a victim, they will screw up your victimization eight ways to Sunday. They will. Because I got one to believe in the big book and he took me kicking and screaming through the steps. And we got to the inventory process in steps four and five and we just got down in black and white what really happened. And it was amazing the things I'd conveniently forgotten on my way to Alcoholics Anonymous.
You know, I had a mom that raised three kids on her own, never took a dime of welfare. She got us up in the morning, she got us food, she got ready for work, she took two buses to work, two buses home, picked us up from daycare, fed us, read to us, checked on our homework. She had a hard life and she didn't quit. She stayed till the end. She never ran away. She didn't do what my dad did. My mom's my hero today, but she wasn't when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I was filled with spite and rage and venom for that woman. It's an amazing thing that happens here. What happened for me is the steps, as much as anything in the inventory process in particular, I think corrected the only mistake a loving God ever made in my case. He made my eyes looking outward instead of looking inward. All my life I've had that perfect ability to look out the world and the people in it with really no effort on my part to tell you what you're doing wrong. And then instantly know what you should be doing instead. And I love to share that with you. But where my life is concerned, I'm a blind man in the wilderness, absolutely no ability to look at myself. And I'm so grateful that the steps took me off of your side of the street and put me on my side of the street where my life is lived out. And you find out things through the steps. I never knew before.
I found out the quality of my life is based on the quality of my actions, not my intentions. That was new information to me when I got here. And I'm so grateful for that. Out Here. And I'm so grateful for that.
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But I was an uncomfortable kid. I don't know if I was born alcoholic. When I got sober, my sobriety date is 9-16-91 for the ones that are just going crazy trying to figure out how long I'm sober, which means I'm a little bit over 23 years sober. And when I got sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, we like to debate things. If there's nothing to debate, we'll make something up. And so they were debating about this thing, were you born an alcoholic, is it a progressive disease, do you develop alcoholism?
And I don't know if I was born alcoholic, but I know this, I was born weird, you know what I mean? Whatever that ism is, I had it, you know, irritable, restless, discontent, I'm not much but I'm all I think about. I'm that guy that gets you in a corner and corners you, right? And I talk incessantly about myself for, I don't know, 20 minutes, then realize I'm doing that and say, wait a minute, wait a minute, that's enough about me.
What do you think of me? And these feelings, these strong emotional feelings, how do I fit in, how does this work, do you love me, do I love you, am I getting enough? You know, these aren't things that are produced by drinking alcohol, these are things that magically go away when I drink alcohol. You know, all my life, there's been a wall between me and the rest of the world, you know, I know you're trying to love me and I'm trying to love you back and I just can't seem to connect.
And when I drink enough alcohol, the wall starts to come down. And for lack of a better explanation, I start to have a spiritual awakening, I get to step out easy. In a doctor's opinion, Silkworth wrote that men and women drink essentially for the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that why they admit it's injurious, they can't differentiate the true from the false, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one.
And I knew alcohol was killing me, I knew it, but the sensation is so elusive and what that means is I can't eat enough, make enough love, make enough money, get enough things to go my way. Nothing fills the hole for this alcoholic like a couple of drinks. And that's all I want, man, I just want a couple of drinks. And you know, because drinks that will produce a sense of ease and comfort in me. And the problem is I see other people doing it and I want to do it.
Drinks others take with impunity. But the problem is I'm an alcoholic and I don't know it. And when you got a disease that kills more people than anything else and you're rolling around with it and you don't know what you suffer from, you think it's a willpower problem, you think it's a moral issue. And I didn't understand that I had something that was physical, spiritual, and mental that was beyond my human power to do anything about.
So I'm basically showing up to a gunfight with a knife and I'm getting slaughtered out there and I don't know why. But it wasn't like I picked up a drink and everything turned to hell, I loved drinking. You need to understand, oh God, that's why I did it for so long. It was so much fun in the beginning. It broke my heart when it stopped working, broke my heart and I'm not a quitter. Because if you're going to go the distance as an alcoholic, you can't let a little thing like looking bad slow you down.
And the early part of my drinking, I didn't get in any trouble, I didn't get in any trouble at all. I wasn't standing in courtrooms in front of judges trying to explain my latest event of outrageous behavior. I'm not standing in front of my mother with her crying her eyes out saying, don't you know you're killing yourself? You can take all those things and label them yet to be added to my story. Alcohol's working for me, from my head to my toes, from the inside out, it's allowing me to be anything I want to be, not feel anything I don't want to feel.
I got out of high school, I'm a graduating class athlete, I got a good grade point average, I got 32 scholarship offers, I don't fill out the first piece of paperwork. Filled with fear. Big book tells me the fabric of my existence is shot through with it. Bill wrote that we think fear ought to be classed with stealing. It seems to cause more trouble. Biggest thief I've ever known in my life, and I've known some big thieves, is fear.
Steals your dreams, steals your ambitions, steals the things that God has for you because you don't think you have, you know, you don't think you can do them, you don't think you deserve them. And so I go into the business world, and God bless us with skills, aptitudes, and abilities. And I did great in the business world, I seem to have the ability to work hard and outwork the people around me. And alcohol, I just love that, love that thing, being able to go in, work a 14, 15, 16 hour day, outwork everybody around you, you're getting those promotions, you're going up, because you know at the end of the day you're drinking.
You know it's waiting for you, you know. And then when trouble starts coming into my story, it's no big deal because alcoholism will always keep pace with the consequences of what happens to me when I drink. And when I started getting into trouble, the first thing my alcoholism gave me was the two best friends you're drinking drunks ever going to need, and that's justification and rationalization. And what that sounds like for me is I have to be able to go to jail, and when I get out of jail to face the people that love me the most and want the best things in the world for me, I have to look them in the eye and with all sincerity say, well, everybody goes
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to jail once in a while. No they don't, they really don't. And I drank and I drank and the trouble built up and I pulled the big geographic and I figured LA was my problem and everybody had this reputation as this party guy and I had too many people around to hang out with me and I moved to Boston, Massachusetts. That was my solution to drinking too much in LA. I moved to Boston and found out, much to my chagrin, they drink in Boston.
They drink more in Boston. And my drinking changed there. I didn't have any family there. I didn't have any friends. Nobody really knew me. It was kind of like whatever restraint I had, nobody cared. You know what I mean? That restraint was pulled back. I didn't have to really protect anybody. And I drank the way I wanted to drink and I drank like an animal and I lived like an animal. And the uglier part of alcoholism, you know, when I got sober, I was quick to tell you about the fist fights and the car wrecks and the womanizing and all the crazy stuff that, you know, movie of the week stuff, that dramatic tough guy stuff.
But I didn't want to tell you what alcoholism really looks like on the inside for a guy like me. I don't want to tell you about being in a nightclub and it's 10.30 at night and I know the liquor store is going to close at 11, which is just insane, but that's when they close in the Boston area. It's just alcohol abuse and running out of that nightclub to get a couple of fists so I have stuff for Sunday and I have stuff for that night, you know, and I'm going to go back to the club and I'm in this taxi cab and we're heading back to the club and this terror just comes over me.
It just comes over me. I don't know what it was. I just suddenly I was afraid and I didn't want to go back in there and be around those people so I told the guy, you know what, I'm just going to go home. Take me to my house. He turns the cab around and he pulls up in front of my apartment and I can't get out of the car because I know there's nobody up in there and I'm just going to be alone with my head and I'm just not ready to go and be alone, you know, and I'm sitting in the back and I'm taking pulls off the jug and I go, hey, man, can you just drive around for a while and I just slide him 20 bucks and he goes, it's your money, buddy.
He starts heading downtown towards Boston, you know, and every now and then he'd go, okay, man, you're out of money. You want to head back? And I'd go, no, that's all right, and I'd feed him another 20 and now we're driving around down, we're driving around Boston Commons, we're driving around the combat zone and I'm feeding him 20s and I hear the radio dispatcher come over and go, hey, man, what's going on with that farrier of yours and, you know, I'm in the back and I'm drunk, I'm three sheets of the wind and he lowers his voice because he doesn't want me to hear it and he goes, it's okay, he's just a lonely drunk and I just remember, man, just feeling that go right through my heart and I went, yeah, that's what I am and that's where alcoholism took me.
It wasn't all that tough guy stuff and all those fun stories, you know, it separated me from everything good in life and I was just afraid. I was just a drunk and I was just so lonely and so empty and I didn't know what to do and I didn't know how to turn to anybody for help. I didn't have the vocabulary to explain what was going on with me because I had already had the gift of self-knowledge. I remember being 25 years old and having the light go on.
I remember being in that motel room at 2 in the morning and all the screaming in that room and realizing there was no screaming in that room, it was in my head and my own head and my own voice saying over and over again, you're going to die if you don't quit drinking. I remember telling my family I was going to quit drinking. I remember telling my girl I was going to quit drinking. I remember thinking I won't ever take another drink again and yet two weeks later I was drunk as a skunk.
I remember how self-knowledge did nothing for me and I hadn't been to Alcoholics Anonymous so I hadn't read your book so I couldn't read the part that said, for the real alcoholic, he'll be unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge. This is a point we want to smash home to our readers as it's been revealed to us, I had a bitter experience and it just doesn't make any sense. You think that if you're a man and you figure out you have a problem, you just knock it off, don't you?
I tried to knock it off and I couldn't. I just couldn't stop drinking and I really think that's when the tentacles of alcoholism start to spread out and really start to take apart the family piece by piece because it's one thing when I'm a knucklehead and I'm running crazy and they're trying to talk to me about my drinking and I'm saying, hey man, I'm just having fun, don't worry about it. And they're like, he doesn't get it.
He doesn't get it. But then when I have the gift of self-knowledge and I tell my family I'm going to quit, I give them the worst thing a drinking drunk can give their family, I give them hope. And they're having those backdoor meetings, you know, where they're talking about Donald and they're saying, did you hear, did you hear, he quit drinking, he finally gets it. Yeah, he says he's going to die, no, he's actually stopped drinking.
And they're so excited and I give them hope and then they see me drunk two weeks later. And they go, what happened, you were doing so well. And I can't tell them the truth because I don't know what the truth is. I don't know why I started again. I just know that every day that goes by since my last drunk, I get more irritable, restless and discontent and confused and baffled because now it's my idea to quit.
It's not the courts, it's not my girlfriend, it's not my employer, it's my idea. Yet after a few short days of my own program of recovery, I want to drink so bad I can't
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stand it. And I know it's tearing my life apart and I know it's going to kill me but I can't stand the way I feel when I'm sober. And I don't know what to do about that and I don't know how to explain that to people. I'm embarrassed by that. I think I'm going insane. I don't think I'm alcoholic, I think I'm just plain crazy. I took Boston as long as I could take it and as long as they would have me which is about three years.
And I came back to Los Angeles and got the best job I've ever had in my life. Probably I mean not just drinking, best job I've ever had to date. Alcoholics are remarkable. We are like cats thrown outside a second story window and we just land on our feet, bam, in a three-piece suit at a job interview. And we get the job. We got no problem getting jobs, getting girls, getting deals. We just can't keep any of it, you know.
And I got this great job, you know, and I did good work for them for a while and then they said, you're doing a great job. And my alcoholic interpreter said, you can slack off and I slacked off and I got fired for my drinking. And I played the victim card and I called up my sister in Simi Valley, California and I said, can I come stay at your place? And she said, you can come stay at my place but if you drink, you're out of here because everyone knows I'm a drunk.
And I told my beautiful sister Patricia, I won't drink, I promise. And I was in that house for seven, eight months before I came to AA and I drank every day in that house. And if you don't know how you do that when they're watching you, maybe you're not a sneaky rat like I am. I don't have a lot of trouble drinking around your schedule. I'm unemployed. When do you go to work? 7 a.m.? Bar's open. And we're not doing fun drinking at that point, are we?
We're doing oblivion drinking, you know what I mean? Get the whiskey on board hard enough and fast enough to shut off your head so you can go to a blackout so I can come to in this room, I'm mooching off of my family to face the hideous four horsemen, terror, frustration, bewilderment, despair, just like vultures waiting for you to talk to you in your own voice about what a loser you are. And that's how I woke up every hangover morning.
And I swear I surrendered to the drink. I thought I was going to die drunk. I got tired of fighting it, man. I mean, how many times can you try to drink and fail, try to stop drinking and fail, try to stop drinking and fail? I was just exhausted. I mean, I did better when I didn't try not to drink, you know what I mean? When I tried to manage it, that's when all hell broke loose. There's nothing worse than like a week of sobriety for me to end up in jail.
I mean, it's just a fact. I just stopped fighting it. And I swore it was going to go down that way. And I got an unemployment check in September of 91, and I went up to my brother-in-law and asked to borrow his card. He, you know, he asked me that embarrassing question like, Don, will you be coming back this time? And I borrowed his car two or three times that summer and gone on a little alcoholic vacations.
We've all taken those. And the 12 and 12 says my outstanding characteristic is defiance. So I got right in Larry's face. I said, Larry, how dare you? You know, the last time this happened, Larry, I apologized. I opened my heart to you. I don't really need this crap. And Larry, untreated Al-Anon that he was, took the car keys out, and I snatched the car keys from this man who's kind enough to let me stay in his house to go out to get in his car.
And I remember thinking, there better be gas in it. The delusions of entitlement that the alcoholic suffers from have no boundaries. You have some. I don't. Why wouldn't you give it to me? It makes perfect sense to a loser taker. And that's what I am. I'm a user of people, places, and things. I'm a taker. All takers are losers. Norm A. used to say that. And it's so true. That's what I am. And I don't know it.
I think I'm misunderstood. I think I'm a victim of bad breaks and misunderstandings. But I'm just a user and taker of everything around me. I go down to the liquor store to cash my unemployment check, because that's where alcoholics of my type cash their unemployment checks. And while I'm in there in line, I have the thought that precedes the first drink. What's in a half pint? You can't get in trouble with a half pint.
And I drink the half pint, and I decide to get another half pint, and I go, you know, I can go visit those friends in the valley. I'll be back in 45 minutes. They won't even miss me. And I'm gone. Three days later, I'm driving up the hill to face this family I'd done over one more time. One more time, I've taken their hope, their faith, their trust, and I've torn it to shreds. And you need to hear this.
Driving up to face that family, I love them no less than I love them at this very moment. But I can't serve two masters. I only got time to serve one. And that's king alcohol. You get between me and the drink, it's nothing personal. It's almost businesslike. I'm getting to the drink. But because I don't know what I suffer from, I can't explain that to you. So I say things like this. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you again.
Can you give me another chance? Can you give me another chance? And it got hard for my family to give me those second, those third, and those thirtieth chances
[00:30:01]
when I roared through their life year after year after year. I walk into a home that's been devastated by the disease of alcoholism. To find out my brother-in-law wanted to report the car stolen, and my sister has negotiated him down to a missing persons report, and the police are on their way up to do the follow-up work now. I don't know if you've ever been up for three straight days drinking, but the police usually aren't who you want to talk to.
I had warrants for my arrest in two counties, so I start yelling at my sister. I got warrants, you know that. I'm going to jail, thanks for nothing, because now it's her fault. I go outside to wait for the police because I don't want the interview to go on in front of the family. I don't know what I'm going to say, but I know I'll be lying, so I'm outside waiting for the cops, and here comes the black and white, and on the side of the black and white it says canine unit.
I think, good, they brought the dog, that's terrific. I'm like I'm in any shape to make a run for it. And the cop got out, and he started asking me those hard, tough questions like, where were you, and everything I remember is illegal, so I'm lying. I'm making up a story, and he's looking at my eyes really hard, and locking my gaze, so I break away from him, and he breaks with me, so now we're interviewing, and dancing, and moving around, and I don't feel good, man.
My hands are wet, and I want to divert his attention. I see the dog in the back seat. I go, hey, is that your partner? He goes, well, yes, it is, and he walks over, and he opens the door, and this dog gets out, German Shepherd, not a hair out of place, like a rentin-tin reincarnate, and with no prompting on my part, he started to relay facts to me about the dog's life. The dog's passed mandatory retirement.
They can't retire him. He's too good. The dog has participated in more arrests than any dog in the history of Ventura County. The dog has participated in more arrests and rescues than any dog in the history of Ventura or Los Angeles County. This dog was so phenomenal that the officers took a collection out of pocket to send him over to Europe for international competition, where he kicked butt on German, German Shepherds, right?
So I say to the cop, I go, well, that's a remarkable dog you have there, sir, and this thought flies in the back of my mind, the kind of thought, the minute you think it, you want to deny it, but you know it's the truth, and what the truth was is this dog had done significantly more with his life than I had done with mine. I just hated that dog. I walk in the house. My sister can't look at me. She's talking to me, but she's looking at the ground because it's too painful to look me in the eyes anymore.
She doesn't want to be lied to to her face one more time, and she tells me I got to go. You got to go. She goes, I know you're going to die, and there's nothing I can do for you anymore, but you can't die here. You're tearing us apart. You're tearing my marriage apart. You're tearing our house apart. You got to go, and if I had any self-respect, any true love for another human being, I would have understood that, and I would have said you're right, and you're right to tell me that.
Let me get my gear and get out of here, but I'm an alcoholic, and I'm not too proud to beg, and I begged for another chance. I gave an Academy Award performance. I cried. I turned on the waterworks. I got nowhere to go. I'll die out there. You got to give me a day, just a day to figure it out. I'll go to AA and everything, and then look behind me to see who said the last part because a day before I got here, I wasn't thinking about you.
You know what I mean? And they didn't believe I was going to go to AA. My first couple of weeks in Alcoholics Anonymous, my sister took me to AA and picked me up from AA. You know, it makes you feel when you look the way I look, and you get in your older sister's compact car at the end of the night, and she's driving you back to her place, and she's like, so Donald, what'd you learn in AA tonight? You know?
I don't remember my first night in Alcoholics Anonymous, but I'll never forget my second night because my second night in AA, I hit the lottery, and not everybody hits the lottery right away. I hit mine the second night in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm sitting in a Simi Valley Alano Club between the 6 o'clock and 8 o'clock meeting there, and I got my back against the wall. I got hair down my back. I got a full beer with food stuck in it.
I'm suffering from audio and visual hallucinations. I'm detoxing the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I've lost the ability to speak the king's English. I communicate in a series of hand gestures, grunts, and clicks. I'm wearing my sunglasses at night. I'm 6'5". I'm 250 pounds. I have a foul mouth and a foul smell, and I look dangerous because I am dangerous because I'm scared to death because I'm dying.
I'm a wounded animal. Now I'm in Alcoholics Anonymous, and the booze is wearing off, and I'm detoxing in your program, and I know this isn't going to work for me
[00:35:02]
because look how clean you are, and look how nice you are, and look how happy you are, and your laughter bouncing off the walls of the clubhouse repels me. Don't you know I'm dying? Guys over there are telling jokes. I should just go put them out. I should just knock them out. Maybe you'll think that's funny, and I got my arms folded. I'm rocking back and forth, and I'm mumbling to myself. I'm just daring you to come talk to me, and I'm so full of fear, but I don't look like I'm scared.
I look like I'm ready to roll, and I'm dying from alcoholism, and I won the lottery because over in the corner was Lou and Mark, and Lou and Mark were car-carrying members of Alcoholics Anonymous, and everybody else in that room gave me a wide berth, and they were right to give me a wide berth. I look dangerous. Mark and Lou were car-carrying members, and they could see through the bluster of a terrified man.
They could see alcoholism killing somebody over there, and they did what they did every night in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's such a small thing. It's such a nicety that we don't understand that in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, it's the most important thing that we can do. It's more important than what we pick for as a topic, what our format is, what we argue about in the business meeting. It's the most important thing that we do at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous is create an environment where recovery can happen, so two guys like Mark and Lou can walk across the room and simply extend themselves to the man who still suffers, and they just introduced themselves to me.
They walked 30 feet across the clubhouse and said, I'm Lou. This is Mark. You look like you're new. Let's get you a half a cup of coffee, and they sat me down with Mark, and Lou clapped me on the back and said, Don, this is Mark. He's going to be your sponsor, and then he walked away, and they assigned me my first sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I know that's not done everywhere. It's not done most places, but my first home group had an expression.
They'd say, picking a sponsor is far too important a decision for a newcomer to make. It kind of makes sense when you hear it like that, and it's really good that they assigned Mark to me, because I'd have never picked the weenie boy they assigned to me, you know what I mean? Because he's everything I'm not. He's soft-spoken. He's bald of head and wire-rimmed glasses, and he's quiet, and he's in love with God, you know, that stuff that floats around AA.
Why don't hit the new man with the God stuff until they're here a little while? I don't want to scare him off. Mark didn't get that memo, you know what I mean? I mean, our first meeting, he's talking about what God did for him, what God did for her, what God did for them, what God was going to do for us, and he was expecting a miracle, and hallelujah, it's all going to be OK. And we're the lucky ones, Don.
We're here in Alcoholics Anonymous. They're out there in the streets tonight, you and I. We're sitting here at a table with the big book between us. We got a chance. We're back in the game. We made it to Alcoholics Anonymous. We're the lucky ones. I'm on my second day of sobriety. I don't feel so lucky, but he's passionate. The big book says that armed with certain facts about himself, an alcoholic can win the entire confidence of another alcoholic in a couple of hours, where the psychiatrist can't do it and the family members can't do it.
One alcoholic talking to another can do it in a couple of hours if he's armed with sufficient facts about himself and he's worked this program. And it says, until such an understanding is reached, until that Mark and I identified with each other and I knew that he had been where I'd been and felt how I'd felt, and he wasn't living that way anymore, until that was reached, little or nothing can be accomplished.
And Mark won my entire confidence in a couple of hours. And it wasn't the words he said. It wasn't what he was talking about. It was how he talked about it. It was the passion. It was the light in his eyes. It was the bounce and it was step. He had the power of a man that had a real answer. And he was giving it away that night. And he was giving it to me. And he saved my life. And the reason he saved my life is he walked 30 feet over to me to extend himself and do what we do in Alcoholics Anonymous.
If you're expecting me to make that same journey, it's a million miles. Shit. I can't do it. I got nothing left in the tank. I've taken everything I've ever had in my life. I've torn it to shreds. Now I'm standing in Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm dying in front of witnesses I don't even know. I can't walk over to you and shake your hand. I can't ask for help. I'm having trouble getting my eyes off of my shoes.
I feel guilty breathing the same air that you're breathing. But you know what I've done, where I've been, how I've lived? And I didn't realize you did. And Mark did. He sat me down, man. He got me busy in Alcoholics Anonymous. He wasn't waiting for me to detox. He wasn't waiting for me to feel a little bit better. He wasn't waiting for me to have my financial situations figured out. He didn't care if I was working, not working, married, not working.
He laid out what Alcoholics Anonymous is and what Alcoholics Anonymous isn't. And he didn't ask my permission about any of it, as I recall.
[00:40:03]
He got a meeting directory and started telling me what I would be doing in Alcoholics Anonymous. And this, on Monday, you'll be going to the 6 o'clock meeting here and the 8 o'clock meeting here. And he's circling. A great deal of circling. And at one point, he stopped circling. He said, by the way, are you working right now? I said, well, no, I'm currently unemployed. More circling, more circling, more circling.
Gets me a big book, 12 and 12. Gives me the meeting directory. Says, do you think you can go home tonight and not drink? That's rude. It's my second night, for God's sakes. He pissed me off. And I said, look, buddy, any idiot can go a day without drinking. And he lit up like Christmas. He said, oh, you're going to be perfect for our program. I mean, think, think, think, first things first, easy does it, live and let live.
Those are nice. But I think we should have a new slogan. Any idiot can go a day without drinking. I mean, because if you've been here any length of time, sometimes it comes down to that, doesn't it? Having one of those days where you go, oh, thank God. This one's got a beginning, a middle, and an end. I'm just going to get through this one. And God, he got me busy. He was so nice for my first day. He said, well, you're going to be perfect for our program.
I mean, think, think, think, first things first, easy does it, live and let live. Those are nice. He was so nice for my first 30 days. After 30 days of continuous sobriety, he came up to me, asked me a very unusual question. He said, I've noticed you don't work. Why is that? And I kind of built up some respect for him. He had that enthusiasm. And I was like his new big Great Dane puppy dog. I just kind of followed him around the clubhouse.
And I'd scare people in AA and threaten people. And they'd go talk to them. And he'd come in with that finger, come here. And he'd say, we don't do that in AA. And after every meeting I went to, for like 30 days, he'd pull me aside and go, we don't do that in AA. If somebody's boring us, we don't go in the corner and do push-ups. We don't do that in AA. We don't finish our coffee and then eat the Styrofoam cup and spit it out at people.
We don't do that in AA. We don't threaten the chairperson in AA. Just on and on and on. So I should have lied to him. If I knew he was going to act, I would have lied to him. But when he said, why aren't you working? I told him the truth. I said, I don't have to work. I'm collecting unemployment. That was a mistake. You want to piss your sponsor off, have a sponsor that swings a hammer for a living about 50 hours a week and goes to like 12 meetings a week and tell him you don't have to work because you're collecting unemployment.
I'd never seen him angry before. His eyes got real red. Have you ever seen somebody so angry that they start to speak and they realize what they're about to say is inappropriate, so they catch themselves. He goes, look, Don, the thing you have to realize, ho, ho, ho, ho. What the program teaches us is shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. And finally, he stutters out. Is there any reason other than sheer laziness that you're not working?
And I thought about it and went, no. He said, great. Call the state of California tomorrow and tell them you no longer require their assistance. And I said, what every good newcomer would say, I'd go, hey, man, I've got eight weeks left on that claim. And he said, call them or get a new sponsor. And he stood up and he walked away. Wow. And I didn't like that very much. And so I yelled to his bald head as he was going off into the distance, I go, hey, I thought this program was suggested.
Another mistake. Because he spun on his heels. I didn't know he could move that fast. Because he was up in here in my personal space before I even saw him move. And he's looking up at me and I'm looking down on him. And he's pointing that bony finger at me and he says, Don, you're so sick that anything I say from this point forward, we're going to assume it's a direction. And we'll let you know when you've passed into the suggestion phase of the program.
And I'm at the crossroads, man, because I do not want to be, I don't want to give up my unemployment. I don't want to have no money. It's the only thing I've got in my life. I'm hopeless. I owe the IRS $80,000. I haven't had a valid driver's license in 10 years. I haven't worked in a year. It's like, and now you want me to give this up? We're getting the gift now. This is terrific. It's not enough that I'm broken in half and dying of alcoholism, new in AA, you want me to be broke-er on top of it.
It's like, when's there enough? Trust me, my ego's smashed. Stop. And I called up the state of California because I knew if I fought one more thing in my life, I wasn't going to make it, and I canceled my unemployment. And then my sponsor and I sat.
[00:45:21]
and then your ego won't be smashed, and then you'll drink, and you'll die, and it won't matter anyway, no, for you, Don, we need something humbling, I don't see that you've ever worked with your hands, I go, no, I barely know what you'll end up with a hammer, he goes, fascinating, and the next day he comes into the clubhouse, and he tells me he got me a job as a framer, or a laborer on a framing crew, now at this point, I'd love to tell you that I found out my true calling in life was to work with my hands, I would be lying, I sucked at that job, I was horrible at that job, I had a nickname, on the job site, the bleeder, I'm three months sober, he comes up to me one day, and he says, hey, what are you doing to say thank you to that family for letting you get sober in their house, because I'm getting sober in the same house I finished my drinking in, and my sister hasn't thrown me out, three months have gone by, and things are looking a little bit better, it's still really uncomfortable between me and her, but, you know, got a roof over my head, and I said, well, I'm not drinking, he said, well, that's mighty big of you, he said, go home tonight and ask your sister if there's anything you can do for her to say thank you, it seemed simple and innocuous to me, so I went home, and I talked to my sister, and said, so my sponsor wants to know, by the way, she loved my first sponsor, you know, I'd come home and talk about how he was mean to me, and she would just, like, light up, I could tell she just loved it, really, and yelled at you, what did he say, you know, so I ask her if there's anything I can do for her, and she doesn't miss a beat, she goes, well, you can paint my house, and I go, your whole house, and she said, yeah, and I said, you know, I'll have to get back to you, I've got to talk to my sponsor, so I talked to my sponsor the next day at the clubhouse, I go, this crazy woman wants me to paint her two-story, 3,800-square-foot house, and he goes, well, is she buying the paint, I go, well, I assume, he goes, ah, you got off easy, paint her house, and I'm bitter, man, I'm not happy about it, I'm bitter, I'm going, this is what you get for being a crap-head brother and having an insane sponsor, slave labor, so now I'm going to 14 meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous a week, working full-time, bleeding at a job site, and in my spare time, I'm painting my sister's house, you see, but my sponsor was a student of the big book, and, you know, he was a student of the book, and he knew the steps, because I was arguing with him, I'm not even on the amends yet, but he knew I wasn't going to make it to the amends, because I was in that house, and I couldn't look my sister in the eye, and I couldn't sleep at night, because I was filled with guilt, shame, and remorse for all the things I had done to that family, and he was a student of where the book says, in two places, the most important word in the amends process, demonstration, and in the first place, it says, our man will be more interested in a demonstration of goodwill than our talk of spiritual discoveries, because, you see, I want to talk about these. I want to steal your dough, sleep with your wife, ruin your business, break your heart, break my promises, get sober and say, hey, but I'm sorry, I got found God, though. We all good? Yeah, I thought we were, right? I won't do it no more. Hey, if I get some money, maybe I'll try to work you in, you know, and my sponsor didn't believe in that crap. He believed in a demonstration of goodwill, and he didn't care about the sweet promises or me telling my sister what I found in AA. He wanted me to do something for her to show that I changed, and I'll never know what it did for my sister. She said it caused a great healing, but I know what it did for me. The deeper I got into that project, by the time I was done, it wasn't like we were all even and we were all square, but I could be in the same room at the same time with my sister, and I could breathe the same air as her, and I could talk to her as an individual, and Alcoholics Anonymous and the amends process and having a sponsor that knew more about this than I did gave me my sister back, and AA and God started giving me back the things that I had lost that meant so much to me, and I remember getting that relationship back, and suddenly we were laughing again, and suddenly there was hope in the room.
And here's a woman that had never gone to AA, never gone to Al-Anon, never read any of our literature, but I got to tell you, man, when we come to Alcoholics Anonymous, the book says a greater demonstration of our principles awaits us in our respective homes, occupations, and affairs. When we come to AA and the God that runs Alcoholics Anonymous and the loving God that we all have here, I think it attaches itself to our alcoholics, and we go back into those respective homes, occupations, and affairs, and I think when I did that, it gave my family hope.
I mean, it talks about the new man and woman in the book coming to AA, and there's something about the atmosphere, something about the light in the eyes, something that conspires to let the sufferer know that maybe he found haven at last, but I'm telling you, when I went back, when I went to AA, very early in my recovery, going back into a home that had been devastated by the disease of alcoholism, God walking in the door with me, my sister catching me, praying on my knees, seeing things that her brother do that she never thought she'd see me do.
[00:50:17]
I believe that it gave her a feeling that maybe she'd found safe haven at last. Things started happening for my family the same time I started to get well in Alcoholics Anonymous. It was a remarkable thing that they didn't have to go to AA to have the hand of God touch them. It's amazing how this thing travels around the world, and in very much the same way that the tentacles of active alcoholism will hurt anyone that has the misfortune of coming in contact with the sufferer, I believe that the tentacles of recovery and love and God and honesty and fellowship that we get attached to here, have the ability to reach out and start to heal people in the same way that our active alcoholism hurt them.
I believe the healing really starts with us. I believe what it says in the amends process, but a mumbling apology will not fit the bill. Lest we be like the farmer who comes out of his cyclone cellar to view the devastation of his farm, only to remark to his wife, don't see anything wrong here, Ma, ain't it great the wind stopped blowing? No, there is a long period of reconstruction ahead, and we must take the lead.
And I had a sponsor that insisted that I take the lead in the recovery of my family. We worked the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I made the amends as prescribed. We did amends. I don't know if they're different. I just didn't hear a lot about this. Everyone I knew was doing it this way. And what he said to do is you had to make an appointment with everyone you were going to see. And not only make an appointment, but tell them exactly why you were coming.
I feel that I have harmed you, and that I owe you an amends. And I'm not quite sure what that's going to look like, but I'm there to discuss what I did. And I need to know how it affected you. And if you're honest enough and fearless enough, it's very important to me that I hear how my behavior did affect you, because I'm handcuffed with my perception of what really happened. And I told my sponsor, that's a bad idea.
And he said, but Don, if you drank as much whiskey as you say you did, who knows what really happened. He goes, you're an alcoholic. We're an alcoholic. First of all, when we come to recovery, we never hurt anybody, did we? We didn't come in there singing that song, the only person I ever hurt was me. Right? We all sing that song. And then after a while, we work the steps, and then begrudgingly, we go through our first inventory.
We go, okay, maybe once in a while, I was to blame. And then we got to do that thing where we hear this stuff in recovery. Bob's going to talk about that. I just love when Bob D. talks about this, our part in things, and the book doesn't say anything about that. It says to set the other guy's behavior aside, where was I to blame? But so after a while, maybe, maybe, with a little bit of cohesion by a sponsor, I'll admit that I'm occasionally wrong.
But I almost instantaneously know some stuff, don't I? I know how wrong I am, how bad I hurt you, how long you should be pissed off about it, and what it should take for you to get over it. And I'm usually wrong. I will need the participation of the people I hurt to really get to the truth. Or it's going to be like this. If I don't do that, if I don't make the appointment, I'll call up my Aunt Sally, and I'll go, hey, Aunt Sally, what's going on?
She'll go, oh, Donald, so good to hear from you. Still going to the A&A? Yeah, yeah, still going, Aunt Sally. Well, what can I do for you? Well, I just call my favorite aunt. Can I do that? Just like to come over and see you. What would that be about? Well, I just thought we'd have a chat. Okay. And I go over to Aunt Sally, and I lay this heavy-handed amends on her. And at the end of it, I say to Aunt Sally, so, Aunt Sally, by the way, how has my behavior affected you?
Now, Aunt Sally's had a front-row seat watching me die by inches, watching this canary of my life. You think she's going to rock the boat when I'm sober for the first time in forever? She's going to say something like this, oh, baby, baby, it's okay. You just keep going to A&A. You don't worry about the money you owe me. You don't worry about any of that stuff. You're just so grateful you're sober.
And as a self-centered, fear-based alcoholic, I say, whew, that was close. And I don't realize I've just screwed myself out of the biggest gift the amends process can give you. It's called the truth. And I'm so grateful my sponsor wouldn't let me shortchange myself. I remember sitting with my sister and telling her about stealing her cars and stealing her money and missing the graduations and missing the holidays.
And I remember telling her how sorry I was and her looking at me and going, so you think that's how your behavior affected me? I said, yeah, I do. She goes, you're wrong. You couldn't be any more wrong. She said, you don't know what it's like to love somebody as much as I love you and to watch you die by inches year after year after year. When I ask you how you're doing, you say, couldn't be better.
You don't know what it's like. You don't know what it's like when the phone rings at my house after 11 o'clock at night. I know it's them calling to tell me I'll never see my baby brother again. You don't know what it's like. And I did know what it was like to love an alcoholic. And, you know, we don't get perfect here. Early in my sobriety when I started working construction, I would get up at 430 in the morning and I wouldn't have any, you know, there were days I just was too lazy to make my lunch.
[00:55:09]
And if I didn't make my lunch, I didn't have anything to eat that day. And one day I was going through the laundry room, which is the way I went out, to go in the garage and go out, and my sister always left her purse in the washing machine. And I'm like two months sober. And I'm thinking, why does she do that? Why does she tempt me like that? Well, maybe because she thought I was an AA and I was sober, it was okay to leave her purse out.
But it wasn't. And I remember one day I didn't have any money and I hadn't made lunch and I said, I'm just going to look. I'm just going to look. And I looked and there was all this cash and I just took 20 bucks. I put it in my pocket. And I felt bad, but I took it. And I spent it. I mean, a couple of bucks even made it into the seventh tradition. And then when I got paid, I slid that 20 bucks back in.
And I felt terrible. I said, I'm never going to do that again, man. God doesn't want me to live that way. And then I did it like six more times before I finally knocked it off. And now I'm making amends to my sister, man, and I've got to get to that part. I go, there's something I've got to tell you. Only this wasn't when I was drinking. This was when I was sober. I stole from you. She goes, what are you talking about?
I'd go into your purse and I'd take 20 bucks when I was broke. And when I got paid, I'd slide it back in. And I probably did it five or six times. I don't know how that makes you feel. I mean, I have no excuse. I wasn't drinking. I was still sober when I did it. And I just was ready for it to blast me. And my sister said, oh, thank God. So glad you told me. I thought I was losing my mind. I go in my purse.
I knew I had 50 bucks. No, I got 30 bucks. I go in my purse. I know I got 50 bucks. No, I got 70 bucks. I thought I was going crazy. Thank God you're telling me. I said, I'm just trying to be of service. I started sponsoring guys when I was six months sober. I have never been without sponsees in the 23 years I've been here after my first six months. And I didn't want to do it. I was scared to death.
I wasn't even through my step work. And I went on a 12-step call and I met a guy. And the next day he called me. You know, he was drinking the night before. Asked where the meeting was. Showed up at the meeting. Asked for help. Said, what that stuff you said about sponsorship made sense to me, Don. He goes, would you be willing to sponsor me? I was scared to hell. I said, I'll get right back to you.
And I ran over to my sponsor. I said, you know that guy on the 12-step call? He goes, yeah. I go, he's here tonight. He goes, you're kidding me. He was drinking last night and now he's here. I go, yeah. He goes, well, that's fantastic. He goes, yeah. He asked me to sponsor him. He goes, oh, that's great. What did you say? I said, I said I'd get back to him. He goes, let me get this straight. He's drinking last night?
Yeah. But he's here tonight? Yeah. And he took whatever strength he had left and asked you for help? Uh-huh. And you said you'd get back to him? Sort of. He said, go say yes, you selfish bastard. And I said to my sponsor, I go, look, I don't want to kill him. And he said, ah, you've got to kill a couple before you get the hang of it. Which isn't true because, you know, to this day, that guy's got six months less than I do.
You know what I mean? And here's the thing. I'm living at my sister's house. I remember when he said he wanted to come to the meeting. I said, do we need to come get you? And he said, oh, no, I have a car. And I thought, he's doing better than me. I remember going to meetings with him. And, you know, we'd be in these book studies. And it'd be his turn to read. And he would just pass the book every time.
Pass the book. And we don't pass in Alcoholics Anonymous. We participate. So after the meeting, I've got to bring the hammer of Thor down on him like my sponsor would bring down on me. And I give him the whole thing about participation. And he gets all sheepish. And he looks at his shoes. He goes, listen, man. He goes, I don't read so good. In fact, I barely read at all. You know, in polite society, man, you made a faux pas like that.
You'd go, oh, God, I didn't know. I'm so sorry. I hope I didn't embarrass you. But this is AA. We don't care about that stuff, do we? I said, Donnie, that's OK. I know how to read. And we go to two meetings a night. And then he'd take me home in his car, because he had the car to my sister's place. And we'd sit in front of my sister's house. We'd just copy the big book, copy the big book. And we'd read the big book back and forth.
And Donnie would get stuck in a word. And I'd show him how to pronounce it. And he'd argue with me. And I'd say, Donnie, you no-reading dummy. I know what I'm talking about. Because you say loving things like the people you sponsor. And if you heard Donnie read today, you wouldn't think he went to Yale. But I'll tell you what, you wouldn't know that he came here functionally illiterate. Because here in Alcoholics Anonymous, it doesn't matter what you bring.
We're going to put it to the good. Everybody's got something to offer. Donnie didn't care I was 80 grand in debt, that I had a crappy job, that I didn't have a car, that I lived at my sister's house. I was a big, fat loser. That's not what he wanted. Donnie wanted sobriety. And what he saw in me was a guy that was living purposefully and was happy and had six months to live. Guy That Was Living Purposefully and Was Happy and Had Six Months of Sobriety.
I thought he didn't want ten years, he's like, how the hell do you get six months? And he came to me and I showed him how to get it because I just showed him what my sponsor showed me. It's amazing what happens around here.
[01:00:00]
I remember feeling so bad, you feel bad about something, don't feel bad about it, tell the old timers. Well, the old timers will take what you feel bad about and we'll put it into service immediately. When my sponsor found out I owed the IRS $80,000, he immediately put that into service. Man, some weenie newcomer would be whining to him, go, man, I owe like $1,200 to the IRS. He'd go, hold that thought.
Don, can you come here for a minute? And I'd walk over to my sponsor and my sponsor would go, tell Billy here how much you owe the IRS. I'd go, I owe the IRS $80,000. And Billy would go, Jesus. And I'd go, just trying to be of service. Billy would go, I feel so much better. Hey, Billy, that's great. And we do what we do in Alcoholics Anonymous, man. We go to work. We pay our taxes. We pay back the dough.
And we go to AA. And we set up the spiritual apparatus so when a new man or woman comes in here, it's going to be absorbed. Another sick drunk can be absorbed. Ten years ago, my wife and I left LA. We moved up to the Pacific Northwest. And we got busy. We had good direction from the old-timers from Los Angeles. Said, look, they're not going to. I talked to Clancy before I moved up there. And I said, what should I do?
He goes, well, first of all, kid, they're not going to like you. He goes, they're not going to like you because you're from LA and you're from the Pacific group. He goes, and you're not that likable. He goes, don't worry about the old-timers. Just get a bunch of new guys. Start working with guys and start some stuff. And we started some stuff. You know what I mean? We started a conference up there.
We started some meetings. We started a men's retreat this year. And you roll up your sleeve. And the funny thing is, if you ever catch yourself wondering what people think about you in Alcoholics Anonymous, my experience is you're not busy enough. I really don't know what anybody thinks of me in AA. I don't have the luxury. I'm too damn busy. I've got to be honest with you. And it's really a shame anybody wastes that much time thinking about me anyway because I'm just having a good time.
But I love that about AA that you can roll up your sleeves and you can create the fellowship you crave. Do whatever you want. You don't like a meeting? Start a meeting. Don't keep going to the meeting. Complain. Take a commitment at the meeting. My first sponsor taught me that because, man, he'd go, if you don't participate, you don't get to complain. And he goes, can you strike me as somebody that likes to complain?
And I go, yeah, I do. I do. I really do like to complain. So I've always been on committees. I've always been at the business meeting. I've always been on the creative part of Alcoholics Anonymous because I like to complain. You know? And you don't get to complain if you don't participate. And I've got to tell you a quick story. And I'm going to sit down. I'm running short on time here. So we moved to Bellingham, Washington.
It's a town of about 80,000. We live about eight miles out of town by the lake. And we're up in the woods, man, like 200-foot trees. I mean, it's just breathtaking. It's beautiful. And at night, it's dark. You know what I mean? I mean, it's darkity-dark-dark. I mean, because we're from the city. We're from LA. We're like concrete, steel, and glass. This was a real culture shock for us. I remember the first time I, like, forgot something in my car and I didn't have the porch light on.
And I just grabbed my keys and I just walked out the door. And I'm walking into my car in the driveway, man. And I suddenly realized how dark it was. And this little voice in my head went, Cougar. And I just freaked out, you know? I mean, I kind of jumped and skipped all the way back in the house. A six-year-old girl, oh-ho-ho-ho, you know, just slammed the door behind me, you know. Eileen's like, what's wrong with you?
And I'm like, yeah, don't go outside without a flashlight. It's very dark. Very dark-dark-darkity-dark-dark. And it's beautiful. We got tons of wildlife, you know. And we got, oh, just all these huge amounts of deer where I live and these beautiful deer. And the first summer, man, all the mama deers are coming around bringing their spotted fawns. And like, we're losing our mind because we might have a blue jay or a squirrel or two in L.A.
But we don't have any wildlife. And then there's deer in my backyard. And we are losing it. We are breaking wildlife laws. We're leaving apples out, doing everything you're not supposed to do. And this one mama, this beautiful mama had this one little boy. And he had a big, big scratch across his nose. You know, he must have got into it with a buck or something. So, you know, we're city kids. We're naming the deer.
You know, that's mama deer and scratch, mama deer and scratch. Just goofy, you know. And we're just geeking out on these deer. And I go to the meat. Man, there's deer. There's deer everywhere. They go, we know. We live here. And just, you know, calm down. And then the rutting season comes in the fall. And the deer start to lose their summer coats and start putting on their winter coats. But not Scratch.
And Scratch starts looking a little rough, man. He's like losing patches of fur here and there. And he's got bald spots here and there. And I'm like, what's up with Scratch? I tell my wife, he's not looking good. She goes, no, he's not. I go, well, maybe, you know, this is what happens when they get their coat. And my wife's that girl, man. Eileen gets on the Internet. She researches it. She comes to me.
She goes, man, this is a big deal. This is actually a thing. It's like deer, when they're in their first year, they get a thing called hair loss syndrome.
[01:05:01]
And they'll lose all their fur. And then winter will come. And they won't be able to eat enough to keep their furnace going. They'll get hypothermic and they'll die. And I said, Scratch is going to die? She goes, yeah. And I go, oh, not on my watch. And I lost my mind. And, I mean, we started doing supplemental feeding. I'm going to the feed store and throwing 50-pound sacks of cobb and molasses in the trunk of my Toyota Avalon and bringing them.
The guy's like, how many heads you got? I'm like, how many head would this feed? He goes, two. I go, I got two head. I'm lying, you know. We're building feeding stations in our backyard. You can't just feed the one sick little deer. All the deer figure out, hey, there's free food in the L.' house. So I got 15 deer in my backyard. And it's not working, man. He's losing more and more hair. Finally, he's lost all the hair on his body except right on the ridge from his head to his rump.
He's got this mohawk. Only he's eating so much, now he's fat and rounded out like a cast of deer. And he's just this fat, rounded out, ugly, mohawk deer. He just kind of eats and poops and stands in the backyard. And I'm obsessed with this deer. I go to work and I call Elaine from work. I go, how's Scratch today? She goes, he doesn't look good. And I go, shake my fist at God. Not this one, God. Not this one.
And the winter comes and it starts to snow and I'm in the snow. I'm building lean-to's in my backyard in the snow. I'm spreading hay down. And he's standing in the mud in the snow, all rounded out. And I'm yelling to him, get under the lean-to. Come on, newcomer. Just yelling at him. And he doesn't die. And he makes it to spring. And for the next three or four years, every summer, right at the end of summer, beginning of rutting season, he'd show up again and we knew it was him because of the big scar.
And now he's this magnificent buck with his full rack. And he'd walk in my backyard and slowly walk right up to my wife and she'd feed him apples by hand. And I'd sit and I'd watch this and I'd go, what was it about that damn deer that made me lose my mind? And one day it hit me. I went, oh, my God, I'm that damn deer. I walked into the Simi Valley Alano Club when I was 31 years old, September 16, 1991, more dead than alive.
In fact, anybody that had a glancing familiarity with alcoholism would have taken one look at me and said, is that guy over there? That guy's going to die. And Mark and Lou, two car-carrying members of Alcoholics Anonymous, sitting in the corner, saw the same guy. And they looked at each other and they said, not on our watch. And they did what we do in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I've got to tell you, Bill and Bob are gone and they've left us a great legacy.
But right now, everyone in this room, this is our watch. And they're coming to Alcoholics Anonymous. They're not here yet. They're finishing up their story, you know what I mean? Maybe somebody suggested to them, I've got to do something with my drinking. You should go to AA. It's not that bad yet, you know, but they're getting close. And they're coming to Alcoholics Anonymous. And the crazy thing about it is they're coming looking for us.
And they don't know what they're looking for. They're going to come into the rooms. They're going to come into our home groups. They're going to come into these places where we go and we socialize and we see our friends. But bet your bottom dollar, when you're there, keep your eye on the door. Because there's going to be a new man and a new woman. And they're going to be coming. And they're not going to be looking like they want help.
And what comes out of their mouth isn't going to be asking for help. But bet your bottom dollar that they don't know what else to do or they wouldn't be in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm so grateful that the men and women in Alcoholics Anonymous understood that it didn't matter what I said, that I didn't know what I really needed. And they grabbed me and they invited me and they took me into their homes and they took me into their hearts and they took me and they invited me into their life.
I think the most important thing that we do for each other is we share our time and we invite each other into our life. You didn't save me with your knowledge of the big book. You saved me not by giving me a commitment but by doing a commitment with me. It was the most powerful thing in the world to be sweeping up after meeting the guy next to me. He's got 25 years and he's pushing the broom. And I'm thinking, he's been doing this for 25 years.
I'm pissed off that I'm sweeping. And he's whistling. I'm missing something. So I've got to tell you, I hope we stay sober forever and I hope we remember it's our watch and they're coming to Alcoholics Anonymous and they're coming looking for us. Thanks.