Audio
Transcript
Source: Don P – From Aurora, Colorado – Date Unknown.mp3 File: don-p-from-aurora-colorado-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:06:09
============================================================
Whew. My name is Don. I'm an alcoholic. After Fifi's visit, I've forgotten what the hell I'm doing here. Don't tell my wife about that, please. I've been privileged to be at a number of these kind of functions, and I must tell you, I have never, ever been treated as warmly or as well as I have this weekend. You're just a fantastic group of people, so we're probably going to have a crying talk tonight. I'm all wound up. December 26th of 1967, God gave me back my life as a free, clear gift. And then he gave me Alcoholics Anonymous so that that gift might have some purpose and some dimension and some meaning and some joy.
Because I didn't come to you all to get sober. I didn't know that's what I needed. In fact, I didn't come to you at all. You dug me out of a rat hole. I could sum up the difference in my life today very simply. There is no other place I'd rather be tonight than right here. And there are no other people that I'd rather be with than you. And there has never been born, nor ever will be born, anyone I'd rather be than me. And it just wasn't always like that. I spent a good part of my life trying to be anywhere but where I was.
And I'm still not too fond of the people I ran around with, although some of them are in this room. Every time I looked to see who Don was, I found a creep. Just couldn't find anybody home worth visiting with. That's before I ever took a drink. Alcohol solved that for me. I was three feet tall with a big wart on the end of my nose, and I talked funny. And I walked funny. And I thought funny. And I took a drink of alcohol, and I was six feet tall. And it was all right for me to be you, or me to be me, and you to be you for a while. And I became willing immediately to pay whatever price I had to pay to get that feeling out of each day. And alcohol's the thing that did that for me. I made an interesting discovery the other day. One of the reasons I drank in high school was because it made it possible for me to dance. I was not a good dancer. And I discovered not too long ago in an A dance that the truth is I'm not a good dancer. In fact, I don't even like to dance. I don't know where the boss is going to take us tonight. I'm killing time until he clicks in. I do know this. I'm here to talk to one person in this group. That's why God sent me here. I hope the rest of you have an enjoyable time. I'm also acutely aware of the fact that I'm dealing with life and death here in this room tonight. Not that I'm going to save any lives, but I'm not here to talk about some scalp jamboree. It's life and death in this room. What we do here means the difference between life and death for people. It did for me. You found me in my third penitentiary. We'll get that out of the way early. I have to talk about penitentiaries not as a status, but because that's where I ended up. I was not a big time gangster. Don't get that idea. I remember one of my better burglaries. Mainly because it's the only one I can remember. I was off duty that night. At the time, I was also a special police officer for the city of Denver. I was off duty that night and drunk. I took the easier, softer way. I went to a place I knew was empty. Three o'clock in the morning, I put on my black watch cap and my black peacoat and got on my bicycle and went off to burglarize this house. I wandered around for a couple hours in that house and left and forgot to take anything. I was not a big time gangster.
[00:05:02]
At the time, I was living in a chicken coop I had converted because it was cool to do that. I believe today that what I was looking for in that house was whatever magic it was that made it possible for those people to live in a house and necessary for me to live in a chicken coop. I didn't find it of course. Let me tell you about my last week. Then we'll talk about what I came here to share with you. The last week of my life, Christmas week of 1967, that was the week that Don got a chance to see Don for exactly who he was.
The images were gone. The excuses were gone. All the scripts were written and trashed. I was on federal parole for an indiscretion I had committed in 1966. My two little boys whose mother had left years before, I raised two little boys in the midst of my sickness. For some ungodly reason, they were back in my care again. We lived in a $40 a month basement apartment beneath a lady who had cats. It was my first understanding of obsession. She had cats. That's the week that as I looked around, I could see that her place was cleaner than mine was. Another piece of that false image that I carried around broke. The Christmas tree that we had was only an alcoholic would pick it out. Our ceiling was this high and the tree was this high. It kind of drooped over at the top. We had gotten that tree for a dollar that I'd found in the snow. That struck me as not quite right. Under that tree, I had managed to literally con this little place out of a pair of cowboy boots and a shirt so my boys would have at least one present, fully intending to pay for them as soon as the welfare check came. If you're ever in Denver, patronize the Merchandise Smart out there on East Colfax. Very kind people. My kids had wrapped up everything that was in the house that would wrap up in blue paper towels so I would have a good Christmas.
That broke another piece of me. But the killer came, thank God. Christmas Day, when the kids and I went down to my folks' house so that they could spend the day with Grandma and Grandpa. My dad met us at the door and he said, I'm sorry, but your mother says I can't let you in anymore. She can't stand watching you die. For the first time in my life, I saw what I'd been doing to my mom and a great big hunk of me broke. Then Dad snuck us in anyway. And I got to see clearly what I was doing to him. I'd been screaming out in my madness that nobody cares. Well, he cared. He cared enough to jeopardize his own home that day and snuck us in anyway. And another piece broke. And I could see clearly what my lifestyle was doing to my kids. You know, every time I got arrested, so did they. They hadn't done anything. My boys were on the road with me for a long time. I'm one of those nut-sos that came out of Berkeley in the 60s, screaming, where there's dope, there's hope. Burn down City Hall. And when you do that, you have to be on the move a great deal.
My kids thought that hitchhiking around the United States was a normal way of life until some damn fool told my older boy about a thing called school and he wanted to go. So we stopped and the train hit me. I ended up in a federal penitentiary. And I saw what that had done to my kids. My dreams were dead. We all have fine dreams when we start, and mine were dead. They were never going to happen. And the dreams that my people had for me were dead. They were never going to happen. And the dreams that my little boys had were dead. And once I got past the self-pity, I made the discovery that there was no good reason for me to stay.
Everybody that I could think of would be better off if I weren't here. And that was the truth. So I took a massive overdose of drugs and drank everything I could find, laid down and died. And was really distressed the next morning when I woke up. The police were at the door. I had, in that last week, set myself up to be arrested. I was really tired and I needed a rest. And I had learned from experience that county jail is a magnificent place for drunks to rest. Now, there are some people in this room, unfortunately, tonight who aren't
[00:10:03]
through drinking. So let me tell you how you survive county jail, because you'll get there. It's real easy. I lie to you for ten minutes, you lie to me for ten minutes, and then we both go take a nap. And that's it. Just remember, you've got to listen to the other guys' lies and believe them. Well, they didn't come to me for that little six months in the county jail. They had nine charges, the first of which called for three years to life in the penitentiary. And a promise from the Denver District Attorney that if I beat him on that he was going to bring the rest of them one at a time. But I was through. And I still had the question in my mind, what the hell is wrong with me? Nobody knew. Well, I laid in the Denver County Jail for five months, waiting for a trial, and doing what you do in a county jail, which is kind of just hanging around lying to each other. And I can still remember that a change had taken place. Because we talked about what we were going to do when we got out. That's what you talk about. And it's always the same thing. We're going to get a keg of beer and a litter of grass and go into the mountains, and we've earned this one. And I was still saying that, but I can still remember that isn't what I wanted anymore.
I didn't want to do that anymore. And I did not know that it was possible for me to not do that. And I've got to tell you about the power of God as I understand him. Because God entered into my life before I knew his name. I met the basic requirement for recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous in my own sick way. I had surrendered. I had said within myself, I would rather die than live one more day this way. And that's the beginnings. I can't do it anymore. I don't even want to try. God, I was tired. Well, the Denver District Attorney and the federal authorities, who owned a piece of me, got together and decided that I was really sick. That's what they told me. And that if I would plead guilty to a reduced charge, they'd give me back to the federal people and they could take me to Fort Worth Texas to a federal hospital down there and fix me. Now, I'd been healing for five months and an alcoholic ego can go from death to reasonably good health in about a half hour.
And my answer to them was based on two factors. And there's always at least two of me at work in here. At least two. I had an occasion a while back to work with a genuine schizophrenic and the poor guy was an amateur. These two guys got together and one side of me was wanting to go anywhere anybody said and do anything anybody said, as long as they didn't ever have to be me ever again. And the other side of me knew that if you put me in a hospital with doctors and books, I'll be on the street in six months. Because God bless them, their job is to tell me what's wrong with me and about how long it's going to take to fix that.
And then he would tell me all of the symptoms I needed to present to convince everybody I was getting well. And I've done that since I was a little bitty kid. I'm awfully good at that game. And I'd have been out. Well, I said yes. My mother raised a drunk, not a dummy. Six months in a federal hospital beats the hell out of life in a penitentiary. And they kept their bargain. They reduced my charge, gave me back to the feds, and five days later I was in the Colorado State Penitentiary saying things like, wait a minute, you can't do this to me. I didn't sign up for this summer camp. And it is by the grace of a very loving God that that happened to me. I'd be dead today if I'd have gone to that federal hospital because we'd have treated the wrong problem.
In our third week in the fish tank, I'm laying there waiting for somebody to tell me what the hell to do. When you think about surrender, that's what it's about. It's real simple. I look at it in terms of an army. When an army surrenders, it means you've met a force over which you have no more power. So you lay down all your fighting tools and sit by the side of the road until somebody comes along and tells you where to go. And I'd laid down all my fighting tools and I was laying around there waiting for somebody to tell me what to do. And as God hollered out, all you new guys come downstairs and listen. And I didn't know any better, so I listened.
They had three guys with numbers on their chests. And the first guy said, my name's Doc, and I'm an alcoholic. The first guy said, My name's Doc, and I'm an alcoholic, and that means that I'm powerless
[00:15:01]
over alcohol, and drugs, and guards, and all of the other circumstances of my life, and my life's become unmanageable. And if any of you smart bastards think you can still manage your lives, look at the reward the state just gave you for the nifty job you've been doing. And I think the great miracle of my life is that I heard Doc. I don't remember a whole lot else about what they said that day, except they did a remarkable thing.
They invited all of us, the day that we got out of fish tank and into main population, to come to their twelve-step study school. They said, You guys aren't doing too good. Your best thinking brought you to the penitentiary. That's not doing too good. And they told us that if we were alcoholic, we didn't ever have to drink again, ever. And if we didn't have to hurt like we'd been hurting ever again, if they had a way that they could show us, it would change our lives.
I came here to be changed, so, and I hadn't been invited anywhere in a long time anyway, so I went to their silly school. Now that meant we had to give up our yard privileges and our movie, and that's all we had. They held those at the same time as the twelve-step study school, and a little sacrifice involved here. So my friend Jim and I, we went to their school, and I discovered sponsorship. They sat us down and said, Now you new guys, for the next five weeks, you have nothing to say.
If you knew anything at all, you wouldn't be here. What the hell was I going to say? And I will be forever grateful, because they did the thing for me that needed to be done. Since I was little, I've been asking what's wrong with me, because I don't fit. I think funny, I feel funny, I make mistakes, I can't get where I'm supposed to be on time. What's wrong with me? Why, when I have all these high ideals, do I keep ending up in a gutter?
And he told me exactly why, and he told it in a way that I could understand it. I was in my first federal penitentiary when I was nineteen, because when I drink, I can't find my way home. And there's a federal law against getting lost when you're in the Navy. I had joined the Navy to save America from the communist menace, and come home a hero. Oh, I needed to be a hero when I was seventeen, awfully bad.
And they kept giving me a twenty-four hour liberty, expecting me to come back. And I went ashore fully expecting to come back, because I loved the Navy, I really did. I got it. Seventeen wars, exciting. Looks pretty dumb from where I'm at today, but it was exciting then. And I was drinking with the big guys, and I was on a ship, and I was a radar man, and it was exciting. And there are very few experiences in my life today that match standing on the bridge of a ship at night, and watching the sea turn over, and listening to the planet breathe.
And I loved it. But I'd go ashore, and I couldn't get back on time. I'd start to drink, that's what you did, and I'd be three minutes or ten minutes or an hour and a half or a day or two. One time was twenty-three days, and they were really mad. See when I went home to Long Beach, they'd moved home to Korea, and I was in trouble. You told me why that happened to me. That happened to me because I have an allergy.
I'm allergic to alcohol. And the symptom of my allergy, if I were allergic to tomatoes and I ate tomatoes, I'd break out with a rash, an itch. The demonstration of my allergy is that when I put alcohol in my body, I'd break out with a scream and meemee itch for more alcohol. And I do not have any choice in the matter. Once I take the first drink, I've lost the power of choice. My body changes and my mind changes, and I become consumed with a need for another drink.
And that must go on until whatever causes that doesn't cause it anymore. And I will always love you. Everybody was always able to tell me, why does that happen? I come to you and you say it happens, and we don't have the slightest idea why. We just know it happens. On day twenty-two, I was in Pershing Square in Los Angeles, mooching drinks and quarters and meals, and I'd do whatever I had to do. I could not go home.
[00:20:01]
On day twenty-three, the madness was not there, and I turned myself into the police like any other rational human being and went back to face the consequences of my act. And that's why that happened. And I came to understand that. It only happens to alcoholics, it doesn't happen to anybody else. And it happens to alcoholics every single time they take a drink. And they let me get just comfortable enough with that to be a little comfortable, and then they hit me with a zinger.
They said, it's academic, if you never take a drink, it'll never happen again. The main problem with me centers in my mind. I've got a mind that for whatever reason, and you don't know that either, can't seem to remember that that's what's going to happen next time. There's a piece missing. My neighbor has that piece. My neighbor owns a bar and doesn't drink. And I was curious about that and got talking with him one day.
It seems he did once. He drank and puked and quit. He didn't like what happened to him, so he didn't do it anymore. He's able to learn from his experience. When it comes to alcohol, I'm not. I could give you a two-hour list of the reasons I drank, and every one of them would be true. I drank to feel good, I drank to stop feeling bad, I drank to be taller, shorter, I drank to be noticed, I drank to be invisible.
But the horror of my life as an alcoholic is that most of the time, I drank for no damn good reason at all. I'm obsessed with alcohol. I learned later I'm obsessed with me. Somewhere along the way, I got the silly idea that I'm supposed to feel good all the time. I spent my whole life trying to do that. Well I'll tell you something, I'm 52 years old now. I'm not really, the state made me 17 when they locked me up, so I'm younger than that.
But on my best day, when I'm feeling at my best, my feet still hurt. So I'm never going to feel good all the time. Alcohol helped me to feel good, to stop from feeling bad. It changed me, and that's why I used it. It changed me. I've got a piece missing. I am convinced in my heart, to this day, almost 19 years sober, that there will still come a day when all of the information stored in my head won't show up and keep me from taking a drink.
So I'm powerless. I've got a body that will go mad if I give it alcohol, and a mind that says, let's have a drink. That's as powerless as I'm going to get. I've been afraid of my mind for a long time. In fact, I went to my sponsor one time and said, Bruce, I'm terrified of this mind of mine. He says, you have good reason to be. We don't trust it out by itself anymore. I had an occasion several years ago that brought that home to me.
I've believed it since you told me. But God gives me experiences that make sure that it's nailed down tight. I was working in an agency that got jobs for ex-cons, and I was wearing a coat and tie. We were having lunch at Leo's in Denver with some businessmen. Really impressive stuff for a guy like me. One of the fellows had discovered a new liqueur. Now, I never heard of liqueur. It's green stuff, and they put it in this funny-looking little glass, and there isn't enough in there to do anybody any good.
He was letting everybody taste it, because it was new. All of my defenses came up, I'm not going to taste that, and I know that. Everything that I'd learned here was there. When it came my turn, I thought, in courtesy, I'll at least sniff it. As I was sniffing it, it burst into my head that the difference between life and death for me would be the twitch of a muscle. It was that easy. Then I watched God move my hand right on off, and I don't sniff anymore.
I'm fully aware that my life is in that delicate a balance, and I can't learn enough about Alcoholics Anonymous, I can't learn enough about alcoholism or life to keep that from happening. I'm powerless over that. So I don't trust me to do it. I didn't turn my life over to the care of God because it was a neat thing to do. They wanted anything else to do. Then we had to deal with insanity. This was a problem for me, because at the time I was certified by the state of Colorado as a sociopath type 2, and the federal government had me certified as a psychopath.
[00:25:01]
The reason I was in that penitentiary was because they were both untreatable, and the hospital didn't want me. They're untreatable because one of those kinds of people doesn't know the difference between right and wrong. The other one knows and just doesn't give a damn. And I was both. And then you come along with the good news that I now have a third terminal untreatable disease. I was terrified because in 18 months they were going to let me out.
I wasn't the least bit afraid of being in there. I knew how to live in there. They were going to let me out. And I knew from past experience there was nothing in that penitentiary that was going to change me. Working in the dishroom certainly wouldn't do that. Well, you took my concerns away from me. My sponsor said, Don, we don't think you're a sociopath or a psychopath. We think you're a good actor.
I used that. I learned when I was very young a thing that some of my Indian ancestors knew. If you want to keep people away, just be a little bit nuts. Put me in a crisis and I go bleh. And all but the stoutest of hearts disappeared. They told me what's wrong with me is that I suffer from alcoholic insanity, which is defined a couple of ways in our big book. The idea that somehow, someday, I'm going to beat the game, it's going to be different next time.
But the working definition for me came in the story of a young car salesman named Jim, who woke up a little angry one morning because he was now working for the company he used to own. He'd been drunk a number of times and 12-step and was now in the program, but he'd failed to enlarge his spiritual life. He just kind of showed up at meetings. And he had a few words with his boss and went off down the road, and he stopped at a bar to have lunch and to find a customer for a car.
He'd done this many times over. And after lunch, somebody inside there said, Jim, on a full stomach, we can have a drink of whiskey if we pour it in our milk. And that sounded like a good idea to him, so he did it. And it was so successful, he didn't go instantly crazy and tear the restaurant up, that he had another. And that didn't do anything bad, so he had another, and he ended up back in a sanitarium.
And the book says that whatever the precise definition may be, we call that plain insanity. How can such lack of proportion and the ability to think straight be anything else? That's what's wrong with me. I lack proportion, and I lack the ability to think straight. I love everything about Alcoholics Anonymous but one thing. If I could, I would go to every place I've ever seen it and tear down the sign on the wall that says, Think, Think, Think.
Because I'm rubber-minded. My sponsor told me, Don, the truth isn't even going to work for you, because I put the truth in here, and my ego catches it and says, ooh, we can use that later. And by the time I get around to using it, it's warped. So they gave me the key to freedom. They said, Don, we suggest that you forget everything you think you know about anything, particularly spiritual matters, because if anything that you thought you knew had worked, you wouldn't be here.
And they said, if you ever have learned anything in your life, it'll still be the truth when we're all through with you. But for now, forget it. And by some form of God's grace, I was able to do that for a time. In fact, to this day, if I'm willing to argue with you and fight with you, it's my opinion and I know it, and it's warped. I never have to fight for the truth. The truth just kind of stands there and is the truth.
But I do love a good battle. My sponsors had some things I wanted. I'm a very practical person. And there were a number of things they had. First of all, Bruce was in that penitentiary for the rest of his natural life for a double murder he'd committed one morning on the streets of Denver when he was 17 years old. He described that day. He'd wakened that morning knowing that nobody cared whether he lived or died, that's how he felt.
And that's very painful. And so he took his medicine, started drinking to kill the pain, and that day it didn't work. It aggravated the pain. And he ended up going downtown in a rage and killing some people. Now, to the best of my knowledge, I don't know how many of you have ever been to the Downtown and Raging, Killing Some People, Now, to the best of my knowledge, I've never done that, but I have waken knowing nobody cared whether I lived or died, and the medicine
[00:30:02]
didn't work, and I did my own bizarre stuff, but Bruce was incapable of doing that act, and I knew that, I'm not blind, he couldn't kill people anymore, and I asked him about it, and he said yes, I've been changed, that's why I'm here, I came to be changed, my sponsor Phil was the most gentle human being I've ever met to this day, now Phil was in that penitentiary because when he was seventeen years old and lived on Guam, he did what Phil did and they said either leave or we're going to lock you up, and several years later in Colorado, the state of Colorado said you either go back to Guam or we're going to lock you up and Guam wouldn't have you, he had been there seven years sober and I was his first person he'd ever sponsored, now what Phil did when Phil got drunk was throw things out of windows, and quite often it was people, and this last time it was three stories up, now Phil in his quiet way looked at me and he said Don, you will stay sober, and I lived on the fourth tier up, he said I'm not losing my first one, Phil taught me to touch in an environment where physically touching is very deadly, but he taught me to touch, now I've never met a human being that loved his family any more than Phil Gutierrez did, but he would tell me I don't do this for them, I do this for me, because if I don't, they don't have anything, and I learned how the most selfless activity in the world is to be done for me, now that's just contradictory enough that my sick mind can grasp that, well Bruce had something else I wanted too, they let Bruce in and out of his cell anytime he wanted, and the reason I knew that is because when I was locked up he used to wander by and stop and talk to me, and I've been locked up enough to know that that's the job you want to get, the one that lets you in and out whenever you want, it wasn't until later that I found out how he did that, Bruce was 12 step in the guys, he couldn't get out, in our prison they knew that over 75% of the people in there were there as a direct result of alcohol, and they believed in Alcoholics Anonymous, because people from the outside for many years had been coming in, and were respectable, and got results, and they trusted Alcoholics Anonymous, now I decided I wanted what they had, so they told me God had done it, and I figured all right what the hell, if that's who you say it is, I didn't I really didn't care, I knew that I could have an entire psychic change you said, and I'd read enough to know that this looked exciting, so I went back to my cell and took my third step and had the worst experience of my entire life, I'm alcoholic and if it goes boom and shakes the room I can handle it, all the way from federal agents breaking down the house to God talking in visions, and I've had visions, what I can't handle is what happened that day, I said the prayer, waited for my flash of light, and absolutely nothing happened, and I can't deal with that, I might as well not have said it, well I'd learned by then that if your sponsor suggests that you do something and you do it, and you don't get the results you think you ought to be getting, go bitch at him, I did, his response to me was dummy, they gave me back my name, I'd been a number they gave me a name, dummy, you ought to be grateful you didn't have a flash of light, they nearly killed you all your life, and he was right I've had some beauties, in case anybody's thinking about visions they will work, I had the privilege of eating peyote with the Indians one time at an Easter ceremony, very real thing, had a real vision, saw a great huge bird flying with no head on it, and understood that that was me in my life, flying high going nowhere, and for four months living in the north woods of California, I stayed sober and clean, then I got back to San Francisco and lost it, so if you're considering visions they will work, they're good for four months of sobriety, but I'm here for the long haul, I didn't come here for any more short-term fixes, whatever it is that we're doing here must last me the rest of my life, it must, so we talked,
[00:35:08]
Bruce took a couple hours out of his life, very precious time, and gave them to me as he shared with me how God had come to him, in a gentle slow way, and the gentleness of him convinced me that that's what God was about, here were three examples in front of me of killers, and stick-up men, and throwers out of windows, who were gentle men, and they said God did that for them, so I figured it must be a gentle God then, and I asked him in all earnestness, Bruce how do I make this deal real, he said well Don, God will reveal himself to you as you reveal yourself to you, and I was sent off to take an inventory of myself, I didn't bother with the book, two hours later when I'd finished it and came back to fist-stepping, this same patient man looked at my inventory and he said that's garbage, you wrote that to impress me, get away, just blew my head away, I mean I had written down some of the most bizarre things I'd ever done, and he's telling me that's garbage, well I did what any good alcoholic does, I went and found a guy that would listen to it, and I had one of those spiritual awakenings, I'd tell him one of these things I had done, and he would say it wasn't that bad, and it was that bad, I was not a nice person, and after a while I awakened to the fact that once again I had found somebody who would tell me what I wanted to hear so I could just keep on doing what I wanted to do, and if I didn't stop that immediately, I was going to die a very ugly death, now then as now, death really doesn't bother me that much, I'm not afraid of it, I'm not eager for the process of dying, but I've died three times that I can recall, but an ugly death has meaning to me, it means that for some period of time before I die, I must live a very ugly life, and I can't stand the thought of that, so I went back and reviewed where I was at, and we talked some more about this God business, I had one last reservation, you'd think I'd have been ready, but I had me a reservation that was a humdinger, you told me it was good news, God had work for me to do, and I knew that wasn't good news at all, because I knew what it was, if I really gave my life over to the care of God, I'd end up on the corner of Colfax and Broadway in Denver handing out Watchtower magazines and asking strangers if they'd been saved, and at that time I just couldn't see me doing that, so my sponsor took some more time with me, and he said the magic words, if you're new, and your sponsor uses these words, you're in trouble, he said let's talk about that, which meant Don listens, Bruce talks, he said Don do you suppose that that fellow that's doing that down at Colfax and Broadway today had breakfast where he wanted to, and I said yeah, he said well you didn't, he said do you suppose that guy that's handing out Watchtower magazines picked out the clothes he's wearing to do that in, and I said probably, and he said you didn't, do you suppose when he's all through asking these perfect strangers if they've been saved, that he gets to go home, and I knew who it was next, because I didn't, and through this gentle process of beating my ego out again, he brought me to the place where I stand before you tonight, and that's very simple, my program is based on the simple fact that anything at all that God has in mind for me is better than anything at all that I may have in mind for me, period, and with that I went back to work, and I got a big book out, and started doing what it said, damnedest process I've ever seen, I found out that the purpose of the inventory was not for me to find out who I was, I already knew who I was and killed him, it was to help me find out who I wasn't, that I was going to find out all the things that stood between me and God, and between me and you, and all I had to do to start that process was make a list of the people I was mad at, and God that was easy, if I knew you I didn't like you, and then I was to put down the reasons that
[00:40:00]
I was mad at you, and that was easy too, that's what I thought about 24 hours a day, and I was to put down what that was doing to my life, and it was a mess, let me tell you about one of them, because it changed my life, in 1966 federal agents broke down my house, that's how they come, unannounced and violently, one through the front door, one through the back door, and one through the side window, knocked me to the ground, handcuffed me, and were just mildly abusing me, they're not so tough, and my little four-year-old let out a shriek, and his big cops swung his gun around to his head, and almost shot him, just as a reflex action, and I hated him, and I nursed that hate all through that federal penitentiary, and after I got out, well he was on my list, I guarantee I was mad at him, I had 22 reasons I was mad at him, one lousy arrest, 22 reasons, he'd made a criminal out of me to start with, you're not a criminal till you're caught, etc., etc., my self-esteem was shot, my sex life was gone, my personal relations, etc., etc., and I tried very hard to take the attitude our big book suggests to get rid of this, that this person like myself was perhaps spiritually sick, and I agreed with that, and I still hated him, then I made a big mistake, I read the directions out of the big book and didn't think, I just did what it said, it said I was to set aside the wrongs he may have done, and resolutely look for my own mistakes, and it burst on me again, I'd invited this clown into my house, I'd been smuggling marijuana out of Mexico in rather large amounts and not paying the tax on it, and that made me fair game for him and anybody like him, I was his business, and I recognized that everything that happened to that day was my fault, including my son almost getting killed, now I'm very careful before I take new people in the inventory, there's no way I could have lived with that knowledge had it not already been that I had a sense of the presence of God, and that I had grasped the great promise of Alcoholics Anonymous, and that was that whatever caused me to do that would be removed and I didn't ever have to do that again, I couldn't have lived with it if I didn't know I don't have to do that again, and I came to that belief because of you, I believed God could do that because he had done it for you, but more importantly, you said you would accept me as I was, where I was at the very beginning, and I knew you were flawed, and if you could do that, then this God could certainly do that, so I had that sense of it, and I just kind of went on from there, I learned about fear, I thought fear lived down here in my tummy because that's where I felt it, and I liked it, you know, talk about lack of proportion, fear is for children, give me a good dose of stark terror anytime, really makes you feel alive and useful and quick, but I learned about the kind of fear that will kill me, I've just gotten up again, and I think that's the worst damage I ever did to the people who love me, every time I got knocked down, I got up again, better I'd have stayed down, but I've just gotten up again, and I got a new job, and everything's gonna be okay, except that I forgot to set the alarm, and I wake up 10 minutes late, and it starts, I'm gonna get caught in traffic, and I'm gonna be 20 minutes late, and I'm gonna walk in, and my new boss is gonna say, where have you been, and I'm not gonna like the way he says it, and I'm gonna say, what do you care, and he's gonna say, well, I care plenty, I pay your salary, and I'm gonna say, no, you don't, I quit, so I don't even get out of bed, I'm paralyzed, and I start to drink, at that son of a bitch, and the way he treated me, the kind of fear that has caused me to walk six blocks around, a little dog in the dark, and within two steps, it went, it's a bull mastiff in the next butch, and God put it on the planet to eat me, so I walked six blocks around it, the kind of fear that kept me from ever engaging in anything real with people, because I knew when you said, with people, because I knew when you said hello, I'd say something dumb, and are we
[00:45:02]
ever blessed here, we live in a world filled with a variety of sick people, and they all have to learn to cope with fear, all the other techniques I've ever seen teach us how to cope with fear, well my coper broke a long time ago, the word cope in my dictionary which my sponsors made a second bible means to fight the good fight, hell I'm all out of fight, all I have to do in the fear situation, this kind of fear, is admit I've got it, and ask myself why I've got it, and admit the fact that the fear is there because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt I don't have the personal resources to deal with it, I've known since I was little, I don't have what it takes all by myself, I just don't, and it leaves me frightened, because I know every now and then I'm going to accidentally do something right, and you're going to want me to repeat it the next day, and I don't even know how I did it the first time, and what is our solution? It's one filled with mercy, it says all I need to do is ask God to remove the fear from me, and direct my attention to what he wants me to be, what an incredible discovery it was to find out that I am not what I do, I'm not the job I have, and I'm not the car I drive, and I'm not the clothes I wear, I'm not what I do, and so I can set all those phony images aside, and with God's help direct my attention to what he wants me to be, and that's scary, you know what it says in the big book he wants us to be? Spearheads of his ever advancing creation, damn that's heavy duty stuff for a drunk, spearheads of his ever advancing, right out in front, which is where I like to be anyway, he wants me to be a demonstration of his great love, and his power, and his way of life, he wants me to be an example of what he wants me to be, and what he can do, man that's good stuff, I came out of Berkeley that way because I never have been one who can quietly get up in the morning and go to work, I've got to have a cause, well we've got one, it's life and death, I've been testing that fear prayer for a long time and it's never failed me, please remove from me this fear, and direct my attention to what you would have me be, see in the third step I gave up my ambition, whatever he wants me to be that's what I'll be, whatever he's got in mind is better than what I have in mind, so when I get to having ambitions, personal ambitions, I know automatically I'm off track here, and the terror of that is that if I get off track on a spiritual path and start getting selfish, I get what I want, and I usually find myself in deep trouble, because I don't know how to handle it, I've learned some tough lessons praying for the things I want, and getting them, I just pray for what he wants for me, that's good enough, well I was two and a half years before I could take a sex inventory, I couldn't remember, in addition to a lot of booze I did a lot of acid and wine wine inhalers and amphetamines and man that'll mess you up, when I finally took it, it fit on the back of a three by five card, I was not super stud, my whole sex life except for those two kids was up here, but a marvelous thing happened in that two year, two and a half years I had been healed, and then I could look at it honestly, well I took that thing and I wasn't going back to that sponsor and risking him telling me that's garbage too, so I went with my friend Jim who was in the program the same length of time I had been, and he spent a whole afternoon with me, sharing with me, and I picked Jim for a couple reasons, you said find somebody who won't be overly affected, and Jim was so crazy and nothing I could have said would have bothered him, but I had a new sense of something with Jim, I was a loner, but I wanted things to be okay for Jim, see I was in that penitentiary for a crime I could remember, I had committed it, Jim was the first one in Colorado convicted under our new drunk driving law, he had killed somebody driving his automobile drunk in a blackout, they told him why he was there, but Jim had no memory of it, he didn't know why he was there, he was a little baffled, and I wanted to be better for Jim, and somewhere I picked up what you taught me, the best way for me to make life better for another drunk is to share the garbage of my life with them, not the neat stuff, the garbage, so I shared my garbage with Jim that day, and he listened, he didn't talk back to me or tell me it wasn't that bad,
[00:50:01]
because we weren't dealing with what was good and bad, we were dealing with what's wrong with me, and he only talked enough to keep me moving, and two marvelous things that happened that day, I can tell you about them today, I experience things today and understand them six or eight weeks later, but something changed that day, I stopped being a sprinter in the game of life, I had finally finished something to the best of my ability, and I stopped being alone, because I went into the room with a fellow I needed, and somewhere that afternoon we ended up with two people, me and a fellow named Jim, you see up to that point I'd been alone because it was me and whoever I needed you to be, none of you were ever real, and that day Jim was there with me, and I've never been alone since. I wish I had time to tell you the rest of the story about Jim, it's magnificent, maybe over the coffee tables we can share that. Then I entered my evangelistic stage. I went back to my cell and reviewed it and realized I had a lifetime of work to do, but I was done and asked God to remove this stuff, but don't let the stuff I haven't found yet get me before I find it, and I'm still here and I found some more last week. Shabby stuff now. Rape and murder, that's status. I yelled at a kid a couple weeks ago and I have to ask myself, why did I do that?
First of all it's dumb, any of you who have kids know that the minute you yell at them they hate you, and it's not necessary for me to yell at children, but I do when they threaten me, and I found that. It drives my little girls nuts, because the minute I make that mistake I go do some inventory and praying and talking to my sponsor and they can't push that button anymore. The 8th and 9th Step Alcoholics Anonymous are the most blessed thing I've ever encountered. I know God forgave me from the beginning of time, but I am so constituted that I must pay for my ticket. I must do that, and we're told that that's also a must. If I don't do that I'll probably die. They wouldn't let me out to make amends, and they wouldn't let you in, so I had to learn to write letters to some people. I owed one place $1.50 for Christmas tree lights we got on credit that same day. I made $0.10 a day, and I had to buy all my personals out of that, and I had to write this guy a letter, tell him who I was, where I was, and what I'd done to him, and would he take a quarter a month until I could pay it off, and for a big time hoodlum that's demeaning. He said yes. The most important amends in my life were to my family. I get frustrated standing here because I've been walking hand in hand with God for 18 some years, and that means each day has been filled with marvelous experiences and miracles, and I want to tell you about them all. We're going to have to just get together, but I do need to share with you the things that I have found about my family. My sponsor sent me to my cell and said the key to freedom is willingness, and he said here's what I want you to do. Make a list of all the people you've harmed. Start with a list of people that hurt you the most, and then he said for you Don, just add anybody you can think of, because if you met them you messed with them. He said you know you will find what you did to some of these people.
You know what you did to some of them, but he said you're so insensitive that you have no idea what it did to them. So here's what he had me do. He said I want you to make the list and then picture each one of them separately, and see if you can feel willing to look them right in the eye and say to each one of them, I've been wrong. I harmed you. Would you please tell me what I have to do so we can get the books to balance? I started going over my list that night, and I was lifted and set free. Locked away for the night, I was literally lifted and set free, because I'll look anybody in the eye and say that if I've hurt you, and tell me what I have to do. And that was so important in making amends to my family.
You see I couldn't go back to my mother and just say, jeez mom, I wish I hadn't done that. What you do after you ask what do I have to do is shut up while I tell you. And after I'd been out for a while, my mother allowed me to come by the house. And I didn't say it in exactly those words, but I found a way to ask her. And I have become, in Alcoholics Anonymous, a listener. She said, honey, all I've ever wanted for you is for you to be happy. So on a regular basis, I go by my mother's house happy. That's it.
[00:55:05]
She told me it was six years before she thought I was really going to make it. I wasn't going by to convince her of anything. My father's an incredible human being. He used to make me crazy. They haven't been able to measure his IQ yet. He's brilliant. Lives in a 48 room house full of stuff. Then it's a reflection of his mind. He's an electronics engineer and a consultant and a genius. I don't know what all he can do. He told me one day in the driveway, he said, Don, I spent 60 years accumulating all this stuff and now I'm going to spend the rest of my life giving it away. And I heard what he really said. He wasn't talking about the stuff in the garage. He was talking about this. So I go by and visit with my dad quite often, which means I listen while he talks about all the things he's discovered in his life. And every now and then I even understand it. He gave me one the other day.
I'll give you because it's a gem. He said, I'm 75 now and I finally learned there's really only two things a person needs to live a good life. Honor and wisdom. He said, You've got to have enough honor to keep every promise you ever make, no matter what the personal consequences. And enough wisdom not to make too many promises like that. I'm just about out of time and it just frustrates me beyond belief because I finally reached a place where I may have something important to say. But if you'll indulge me another five minutes or so, I'll be brief because there's some really important things I need to share with you. Nine years ago I met a sane lady. I'd never met one. I'd never even looked for one. I didn't even know they were out there. I had enough smarts to say yes and move in with her and her two little girls. And as much as I love this lady, I've already raised seven kids. I've been after Dan Byrne for a long time. And I thought I'd done my fair share and I really wasn't sure I wanted to do that. I worked in the penitentiary now.
I lived at the base of Mount Princeton, a 14,000 foot peak in the high country of Colorado. Worked six hours a day. Had those two lunkhead kids of mine who are now teenagers. I worked six hours a day and went fishing if it felt like it. We loved it. I went into Denver once a week for my home group and I loved it and I didn't want to give it up. But I did. And I'm so glad I did that. You taught me about being in a family. You taught me how to recover through the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and how to live as a family through the twelve traditions. And we apply that in my home. That's how we live. And these little girls are something. One's 15, one's 13 now. And they send their love to you, particularly the little one. She loves you dearly. You see, when I go out of the house, she's a little nervous. Her daddy's a Denver detective and he has some bizarre need to tell them what he does for a living. So when I leave at night, they're a little frightened. When I'm gone over the weekends, they're a little frightened. I'm gone a lot because you asked me to work for you. And she'll ask me, where are you going dad? And I say, honey, I'm going to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I watch her relax because she knows if I'm here with you doing God's work, he's watching my house for me. I've told her that. She believes that. She would have been with us the day we came home and found out we'd been burglarized. We ex-burglars don't like that. My older girl says, my God, what am I going to tell the kids at school?
I've been telling them God watches our house. And because of what I know here, I was able to say to her, honey, he did. We weren't here. All I got was our stuff. We didn't get hurt. We're going to have a garage sale anyway. You have given me some of the greatest joy in my life. I was absolutely useless, and that was a fact. And you've trusted me with some… And you've trusted me with some jobs that are incredibly important to Alcoholics Anonymous.
You let me have the key to the meeting room one time. Probably the most important job in AA.
[01:00:02]
If the guy with the key doesn't show up, how are we going to have a meeting? You allowed me to make coffee, and I make awful coffee. I've only held that job once. I caught a bad case of GSR a while back. My sponsor had something I wanted, and I found out he was in service. And it filled the last piece of me, the piece that was missing. I not only owe my life to the next person that walks in the door, I owe my life and dedicate my life to the person who comes through the door when I'm dead and gone 50 years from now.
This thing must still be here if God so chooses it must be here. So I have a stewardship, I'm a caretaker. I'm currently serving you as trustee at large on your general service board, which just absolutely blows me away. I finally worked my way to the bottom. In our structure, that's where it is. I can't do a damn thing unless you ask me to. Marvelous. But as a result of that, I'm gone a lot, and I worry about my kids.
Well, my daughter, my young daughter, a few months ago had occasion to write a theme about her dad, and she picked me. She wrote eight pages of some of the neatest stuff I've ever written. I mean, I was glad to know me that day. But her final paragraph rocked me where I lived. She said, if I'd have had any choice, I'd have picked Don for my dad, but I didn't have any choice. So God picked him and brought him to me.
And I wondered at the emotion that I felt, why I felt so deeply about that, until I understood, that's how I feel about you. That's how I feel about you. If I'd have had any choice at all, I'd have picked you, but I didn't have any choice. So God picked you and brought you to me. And you have made my life worth something. It no longer is any question in my mind that I don't belong here, I belong here.
I came to you willing, eager to die. And because of what I have learned and experienced here, I'm willing to live just as long as he wants, whether my feet hurt or not. I'm also willing, if it should be his will, when I leave this room tonight, that this is it. I go with a full heart. There's nothing more I could do. And yet on the airplane up here, I had made a list of 22 things I want to do in the next couple months.
Next Friday, on your behalf, I'm going to Guatemala. Alcoholics Anonymous is alive and well in 114 countries, and 27 of them are sending delegates to Guatemala next week. So we can all share experience on how better to carry this message anywhere. It seems that we translate real good. This message is understood by people of all cultures and all mindsets, and they're getting well all over the world.
And I get to go sit in the middle of that. I couldn't have earned it, couldn't have planned it. I'll guarantee you from reading the newspapers, the last place I'd pick to go next week is Guatemala. But on your behalf, I'm going. And I sincerely hope when I come back that somebody will ask me to tell you about it. Because I know what's going to happen to me. I'm going to come back just as I am now, unable to keep my big mouth shut.
I must tell you about it. Let's spend some time at the tables, because I'm not through yet. I want to hear you, and I have a number of things I'd like to share with you in love. But I'm all done for tonight. I want to give you a gift. It's my personal gift. It came to me as I came out of meditation one time. My meditations are simple. They have to be. I go to a garden with my father. And I just kind of sit there, and he walks with me, he talks with me, and he tells me I'm his own.
And I used to take my burdens into the garden with me. I've learned not to do that. I leave them outside the garden, and I just go in. Generally, when I come back out, I've either got enough sense to just let them lay, or I have the strength to pick them up and go do something about them. And as I came out one day, I didn't have anything left to carry. And this thing burst on me. I had become everybody I had ever met, or ever read about or seen in a movie.
[01:05:03]
And I was going to have to spend the rest of my life sorting that out, and I'd already failed to do that. And you told me, no, that isn't how we do it here. What we do is kind of like the fellow who had seen the statue of David, but Michelangelo for the first time. I don't know if you've seen it, but it breathes. And he was awestruck. And he went to Michelangelo, and he said, how in the world did you do that?
And Michelangelo said, well, I took a block of marble, and I chipped away everything that didn't look like David, and that's what I got. And that's how I see Alcoholics Anonymous. With God as the sculptor, and all the funny little things we do here as the chisel, and with me as a very willing block of stone, one day at a time, we're chipping away everything that doesn't look like Don. And so far, this is what we've got.
Thank you very much. Alcoholics Anonymous