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Source: Doug V – Came 2 Believe (2023) – Steps Four and Five – Date Unknown.mp3 File: doug-v-came-2-believe-2023-steps-four-and-five-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:56:42
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Thank you. They always have to do that for me. I'm always wearing out the hinge on the mic stand. My name is Doug. I'm an alcoholic. My home group is the East North Port Eye Opener Group. It's in East North Port, New York on Long Island, which to Connecticut is that piece of land that prevents you from having oceanfront property, which is a resentment, I understand. Sorry. I have a sobriety date. My last drink was on January 13th, 2008, but my sober date is May 18th, 2011. I mention that and I'll get into it a little bit because that's the delusion. I was here at Alcoholics Anonymous and doing everything I thought I could do. The delusion of this alcoholism absolutely tells me that I'm doing good and I'm not. Without good sponsorship and direction and without you, I am absolutely trying to kill myself. Alcoholism wants me dead. It's the ego. There's been a lot about the ego this weekend so far. That reading, I was struck by that by what Kelly had said when she was talking about from one to another to another, came to believe, to Roland Hazard, to Ebi, to Bill and to Bob. The series of events. Last year, Billy was here and he talked about Carl Young, who was a protege of Sigmund Freud at the time. I think it was Clark University where he met up with William James and got set into another direction. These series of events. I love when we sit down and we go through the book with people. I feel like this book is like this mysterious brick. If you're new and you're just here and you're like, I don't know what's in that thing. It looks strange and it's sitting there and it's over there. As we little by little give you the stories of what's in here and you look at that series of events, it's the first thing I go through in the preface and the forwards and try and give you a little bit of history and make you feel welcome. Then you go to a meeting when you're new and then instead of feeling lost, the first time you hear somebody say something, you go, wait a minute, that's not right. For me, I feel welcome. I feel like I fit in. I knew something you don't know. I know that's the ego. We could touch that, but we'll work with that a little bit. I found that my ego will kill me, but I used it to learn a lot of lessons. I'm like really, really humongous ego, but then I hear here the same stories. As was said, this is something that I do this if I'm asked just for the service and if I can be of service. I love moving tables and chairs and if you ask me to come up here and tell you what a disaster I am, I'll do that too. I was thinking about some of the people, some of the workers. Sometimes we have before the banquet, they're getting ready to set up and we might touch some alcoholic who's just sitting there on the side waiting and they want to go, come on, we need the room. We've got to turn it over and get ready for the banquet. Maybe somebody there with alcoholism didn't know anything about it will hear something. More often than not, I think of the person that has nothing to do with it and they say, if you look at this and you'd say, wow, motivational speaker. I'm going to get inspired and they come and they listen. I'm talking about the time that I went to throw out my tuxedo on and threw out the window of my car, but the window was up and so I threw out all of my tuxedo. There was a guy who said that he went and brought this tuxedo to the dry cleaners and I didn't want to say anything. He says, yeah, I was at this banquet and some guy threw up on me, this drunk threw up on me and he was like, oh, that's terrible, that's awful. He ran in, he came back to pick up his dry cleaning and the proprietor was like, wow, that was some drunk, man. He crapped your pants too. That's unbelievable. Unbelievable, you know. And he could see the woman at the door, somebody at the door, a non-alcoholic listening going, that's not inspirational. I'm not motivated by that. Why would you say that? That's terrible. That's awful. And that's that worldliness and levity, you know, we laugh at such things. You know, Rich was talking, he had a great talk and I identified, I felt bad that his first drink was peach schnapps and his bully was a guy named Reed, that seems a little weird, you know. I like Rocco and whiskey, that's me, you know. My ego needs tough guy stuff. Mine was blueberry brandy was the first thing I vomited, I projectile vomited. I was babysitting my nephew and I grabbed Bobby, I was like, I don't know, I had been drinking for a while. But this night, babysitting and blueberry brandy, that was it, right? Blackberry brandy, that was it, I couldn't remember that. But I was drinking that and yeah, I remember blackberry brandy, isn't that great? It's a dessert, right? You just did a little, a little and you drink the whole bottle and then you pass out. And my brother comes home after I'm babysitting, the baby's asleep, thank God, the house didn't go on fire. And I wake up and I go, ah, off the balcony, living in an apartment and down on the bottom and it's like, this is how I drink, you know. And I started from an early age, but it was that separation that I feel is just, it gets me. And that started when
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I was little and I grew up like rich in a nice family, these nice people. But we went to church and we had an alcoholic in my family, was my grandfather. He was a Broadway musician, went to Juilliard and, but he was an alcoholic and I heard that, that alcohol, that damn alcoholic, you know, my grandmother, that's the only thing I knew about alcoholic was him. And I heard in the family, my father's family, his father died when he was younger with alcoholism. And my parents both got together at this idea of working hard and raising a family really well. And then, you know, through the early 60s, they had this, they moved to the suburbs and there's kids everywhere and we're all insane. And it was just drugs and alcohol everywhere. And I learned to drink, you know, I wanted to drink. And I felt like when I go out and with all those kids, I felt like, you know, I'd go out and I just felt separate. And somebody talked about the, there's a common, an answer to a question and I don't even know the question, right? It's like, it's, what is that? And I don't know what's going on. And they're talking about me. And that's the other part. I'm always worried about me and thinking about me. And why are you always thinking about me? And then I go, why aren't they thinking about me? They should be thinking about me because I'm thinking about me. And I'm always, it's like, I'm in my head and I'm crazy. And they're about 12 years old. I take my first drink of vodka because it was on the counter. Nothing like warm vodka, you know, when you're 12 years old, it might've been younger than that.
I don't remember the time, but I remember the feeling. And when I took that, it was like, oh, and I had the answers. And that's an exaggerated effect from alcohol. It's not supposed to be that way, you know? And so I went through my whole life thinking that and like as a kid, I chased that. And while other kids in school, like Rich, I'm flipping cars, man. I'm over it. I'm not going to school. I'm drinking, flipping cars with, you know, cars we borrowed because at 14, they don't just let you drive and they don't give you the cars. You have to take the car. And so while everyone else is in school, I'm getting drunk, flipping cars, getting chased by the police. And I'm building the resentments.
I'm building my fourth step through my life. I'm starting to build this fourth step because things are happening to me that aren't supposed to be happening to me. And you're doing this to me and they're doing this to me. And I think that there's a God, I know there's a God, but he's also doing it to me. That was my biggest resentment. This God is, he hates me. Why does this God hate me? What did I do? And I'm getting very angry at a young age, blaming everybody for things. And it just seemed to be very much like tense. I was having fun, but then when I not drink, I just didn't feel good. And I didn't recognize that. But when you're a teenager, you have a lot of fun, you do all kinds of crazy stuff.
And there were a couple of times in there that looking back, I don't think God works this way, but why would I blame a God? There were certain things happen. One time we got into trouble and it was really bad. And it was a night we were all out. But a friend of mine's father was the president of the PBA. And because he was with us, we got away with this. And it was something that could have set my life into a much different track.
And then when I was 20, I went out and this is me conquering the world. And I got into a little trouble that set me up for a little prison time. But I didn't have to do prison time. I had to do a year in a county jail because one of the guys I was with, his mother was worked in the Bronx district attorney's office. And she didn't want her son going to the penitentiary upstate. So we got out with a year in the county jail. And so here I am, conquering the world, turned 21 in Nassau County Correctional Facility, and they invite me to AA. And I didn't know anything about AA. But on a Tuesday night before commissary, they invite you and they have like a cup of coffee and a piece of cake and some cigarettes.
And that's like a night out. So I'm like, oh sure, I got nothing better to do. It's Tuesday night. And I go and I meet these people and they come in and you go through a bunch of cages and you sit there and they come in and they tell you their stories. And they're like these bikers and they're like old, they're like 40, and they're like telling me, oh, it doesn't have to be like that no more. And we're making fun of them and laughing. And they go and they leave and we go back, go back to the cage. And we're laughing at these fools, these morons. Did you hear those guys? What idiots, what losers. As the bars slam home and they're home having dinner with their families. And I'll bet you if I'd have asked they'd have picked me up at the jail and take me to a meeting. And I didn't care what I thought of them. They just did it like we do here. I want to thank, I want to thank Dave and Jennifer for putting this on for the four years that I've come here. It's been a great experience. This is what I do now. And that's why that reading, the change in my life that this is my vacation I look forward to. And we go to Vegas a lot. And I love in June we have the conference. I'm in Vegas for 10 days and they're like, where you going on your vacation? We're going to Vegas. And they're like, oh, Vegas. And I'm like, yeah, you have no idea. And it's great because the first thing I do, I get on the ground, I make a call. OK, we're going at the West Care. We're going to go bring a meeting in over here. We're going to go there. And we have all this fun. And it's all wrapped around AA because it gave me my life. It freed me, but I didn't know it. It was there for me.
This God was waiting for me. Everything was on a platter. And I spit on it. And I got out of jail. I went to the meetings. I learned that if you go into jail and you tell them you're a alcoholic and you play the game right, they let you out early. I'll tell you a squirrel let me the hell out of here. I just want to get out. I don't care. So I went to the
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meetings. I told them I was alcoholics and honest. And they said, OK. They let me out early. And I was like, thank you. And I said, now get to a meeting tonight. Go to a meeting. And I said, OK. So I did at the bar with my friends. We had a meeting. We always had a meeting at the bar. Every night we had a meeting at the bar. And I went on that path thinking I was just nothing. Nothing was wrong. Everything was great. And at 26 years old, I lost everything.
I was bartending, doing construction. And now I did a couple of DWIs. And my life is a mess. And I'm back home at my mother's house. And I was drinking a Tallboy on like a Wednesday after a four-day run. At this point, once I go out and drink, it goes to about four days. And I come up. And I'm feeling miserable. And the depression starts again. And this is not clinical depression. But for me, it's just the misery of how is this getting here? Where's my life? And my mother looked at me with such disgust. And I felt so empty.
And I started to feel that. And I said, I can't do this. And that was in 1988. And as I said, my last drink wasn't until 2008. But I knew that day I was never going to drink again. And as I realized, and maybe I heard it in jail, if I don't take this first drink, then I'll never, you know, I don't go into this long four-day run. You know, that first one, I knew that. But knowledge isn't enough. But I wrote on that beer can. And I remember this. I wrote the date. As I remember, it was April 1988. And I put it on the shelf.
And that was my program of recovery. I'm never going to drink again. And it lasted for two weeks. The goose hung high, as it says. And I was going about. And everything was great. And I was really, I got my job. I was doing good. I'm making a little money. And I'm feeling great. And about two weeks later, it's a Friday. And I'm feeling so great. I had to celebrate. I have, I did it. I quit drinking. It's great. And I went and celebrated. And how do you celebrate not drinking? You drink, right? And I went out drinking that night. And I went and I had a couple of drinks because now I got it under control. And the woman outside would be like, that's crazy. Why would you do a thing like that? Didn't you learn your lesson? No. I don't get this idea that when I'm not drinking, although I thought it was good, I'm feeling these things called restless, irritable, and discontent. And I didn't learn that until I got here. And what it was is when I'm not drinking, I just, I can't sit still. I'm trying to conquer everything. I'm trying to do everything and nothing. I'm going to clean the garage. I'm going to mow the lawn. I'm going to clean my truck. I'm going to go to a ball game. I'm going to watch the ball game. I'm going to clean the roof.
I'm going to do everything. I'm going to run around. I got to clean the gutters. It's got to be cleaned. I'm holding the roof. Everything has got to be done. But I can't get anything done. I don't know which way to run. When you do that, you get very irritable. It's like very restless. And the irritability is I'm punching holes in walls. I had a weekend activity. If I wasn't drinking, this is what I did. Saturday, I'd punch holes in the walls.
Sunday, I'd spackle the walls up. That's what I did all weekend. They said, what are you doing this weekend? Well, Saturday, I'll punch some holes in the walls. And Sunday, I'll spackle them all up. And you know, it's a good recreation. That I could do. But when Mari talked about that, you know, we had this depression. And when I was doing the runs towards the end, it was that long after a long thing. I would get like, you know, when you get off a run, and I'm like, oh, the pain of it. There was like this emptiness. And I'm like, I used to make this sound. It sounded like a yak in heat or something. It's like, what is that noise? I was like purging this. I was like miserable. And I'd know that. And then I'd sober up for four days, five days. And I'd know. And I remember drinking knowing that I was going to feel that misery. And I never wanted to feel that way. And I drank anyway. Because the way I felt not drinking, I couldn't do it. And how do you do that?
And so in there, I'm angry at everybody. Because I'm trying all these ways. I moved. I got a little settlement. I built a business. And then I had an apartment. I moved out of the town. I got engaged. That's a great program of recovery. Unfortunately, when you get engaged, they expect to get married. But I just, I was like, you know, I got engaged. I got a really nice ring. And she starts planning this wedding. I'm like, oh, no. I just wanted to get engaged. And the reason is I thought if I was engaged and had a business and I lived in another community, this would stop. Because I keep looking at the mirror going, when is this going to stop? And it's getting worse. And I'm like, not at 35, right? It won't be at 40. Definitely, this won't be at 45. And there's no way I can live like this at 45. But it gets emptier and emptier. And my last program of recovery in 2006 was little Doug was born. And that was going to keep me sober. And that's a terrible thing to need other people to keep you sober to straighten out your life. You know, I did get married. And I remember on the day I got married, I was like, this is a bad idea. We didn't get along. And nobody got along with me. And so I resented her. And then when Doug was born, that was the worst year. The first year of his life was the worst drinking I ever did. And I was just so empty. And I was dying. And so I tried, you know, the suicide thing. I walked down the street. I'm going to jump in front of a truck. And I remember it was raining. I was in my socks. But there was a bar there. So I said, I'll get a couple of drinks before I jump in front of the truck. I mean, that's what you do, right? And I was sitting there and I was looking at these people having a bowling alley party. And I was so angry, resentful, and fearful. And the fear was, I can't make this work. And I'm looking at them, and I'm like, how did…
And I'm looking at them, and I'm like, how did, it's a pathetic bowling alley party, but I couldn't do it.
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I couldn't show up for my son, I couldn't show up, and I, I couldn't do it, and I didn't know what to do. And I got drunk, and I didn't kill myself, and went on a couple months, and then, I went on a last run, and for some reason, in, on January 13th, I woke up after a four day, four, four day drunk, and she's leaving with the kids, and I just asked her to get me a six pack, and I said, this stops now, and I'd said it a million times, but there was one difference, there was no but, for some reason, inside, and I, you know, I have those God, those God moments that you don't realize, and it was something, I felt good, I used to need sedatives to sleep after a run, but that night, I just fell asleep, I was like, this ends, because I was willing to do anything, and I mean anything, and that meant going to AA. I didn't know it at the time, I called the counselor, and he said, come and see me, and I waited a couple days, and I went to see him, and he's like, looking and listening to my story, and he's like, well, you're a little nuts, but you should probably go to AA, you know, and I was like, how come everyone's always inviting me to AA, and I mean, for years, people, and let me tell you, if you're getting invited to AA, it's a special invitation, we don't give it to everybody, but, you know, you might want to consider it, you know, so, I had no idea, and finally, I said, sure, and it was as if I'd never heard of AA before, it was like new, I was like, where do they go, where do they meet, and there was one right outside my house, like a five iron off my back deck, and I went there, and I prayed in that parking lot, and I said, God, I don't know if you're up there, or you even care, but please, this one year old at home, I've got to do this, something's got to change, and I walked in there to my first meeting with alcoholics, and these people were sitting around, and they were reading this brick, and I had no idea, and it was very bizarre, and I love it, they'd turn around and go, this is my favorite part, and they'd read that, and then I'd go back next week, and it'd be different, and she'd go, ooh, this is my favorite part, and I was like, didn't you just say last week that was your favorite part, so, you know, but I did get to, I was on the beginner meeting circuit, and you get in there, and then you see all the other new people, and we got to know each other, and you give them the high sign, then you start seeing people in the grocery store, and I'm with my wife shopping, and we're like, hey, how you doing, she's like, is everybody one of these people, and I said, well, yeah, and you can hear the serenity prayer over in produce and stuff, there's a stop and shop, we call it stop and share, anyway, but it's really, there's this community, it's almost like everybody, you're in a bar, and all of a sudden, people start disappearing, and then one by one, it's like, where'd Joe go, where'd John go, where'd Bill go, and then you come to A, and they're like, hey, we've been waiting for you, and it's like, oh, why didn't you tell me, and it's like, because you wouldn't have believed us, you know, and I wouldn't have, you couldn't have come in the bar and ripped me off the stool, I had to fall off the stool and crawl to you, and when I came here, I was at the eye opener, and it was a great meeting, and they told me one thing to do, just sit in the magic chair and listen, and if you just sit in this magic chair and listen, it'll all get better, and somehow I knew that wasn't true, because I'd tried that a bunch of times, but I was able to sit there, and I'm listening, and by 30 days, I wanted to kill somebody, restless, irritable, and discontent, and that discontent, when you're not drinking after a four-day run, just the regular discontent is the worst, because you can't put your finger on it, at least I'm thinking, I'd walk out of the meeting, I'd feel great at the beginning of the meeting, and I'd go home to my wife and kid, and I was like, it's like living in black and white, and I don't know how long I could do that, so I started asking a lot of questions, and here you've got to do these steps, and they're like, oh, just sit there for the first year, don't do anything for the first year, steps one, two, three, one, two, three, and here you've got to get a sponsor, finally I asked somebody for a sponsor, and he was a good guy, he had a couple of years, and he was pretty intimidating, and he didn't say he'd sponsor me, he gave me to someone else who had four years, his name was Dan S., and Dan S. was sober for those four years on step zero, and I guess the guy knew that he needed to take someone through the steps, but maybe this would light a fire under him, you know, but you know, I don't know how God works, but Dan was a good guy, and maybe, you know, he's still sober today, he moved out to the Hamptons, and he'd probably have to sponsor, and not like me, he'd probably figure, and he might have went through the steps, but I kept asking him questions, and I'm starting to read, and I'm starting to listen to some tapes of these people talking, and Dan actually had some, I'd always ask him questions about this, and he said, well, I don't know about that, Doug, but let me ask and find out, and he'd always get back to me, he'd always take my calls, he was learning how to sponsor somebody, at least be there for somebody, right, and I asked him about it, I said, I heard you could listen to people talking about the steps, do you know anything about that, and he goes, no, but I have a friend who does, and the next time I see him, he has a brown paper bag with CDs, like he's giving me weed, and I'm looking, and there's all these guys, and I remember there's one guy, Norm A., from Monrovia, California, and they say he's the everyman guy, remember Norm, right, if anybody's ever heard of Norm, and he was like this crazy guy, and he was stealing cars, and the midnight auto parts, and he had these eight kids, and all this crazy stuff, and this whole story was amazing, and I was listening, I used to work, I had a floor sanding business, and I'd put the headphones on, and I'd listen, and I was like, oh, wow, this is great, he really inspired me, they say if you went to a meeting, and Norm was speaking, you'd want to join AA,
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and then you'd realize, well, I'm already in AA, that's why I'm here, you know, but he was such a, at the end, he would say, but for the grace of God, I would have missed it all, seconds and inches, and I looked at my life, seconds and inches, all the things that I just missed, and it was almost like being steered, and I think that whatever it is, God, whatever's running this, didn't want me to come into AA in 2000, in 1988, or 1998, or all the times I should have been here, because my ego would have totally destroyed it, I would have come here, and I don't think I could have survived, I would have known everything, and I would have just been, you know, I was just, I needed to really get home, and I don't think God is a punishing God, but he'll say, it's here when you want it, and I had to go all the way to the bottom, and then I come in here, and so, I listened to that, and some other ones, and then I started listening to the ones talking about the steps, and I'm like, I knew they were lying, I knew there was more, and I started to read, and I started to get it, and I was like, I gotta go to four-step, I have to do a four-step, because I built up these resentments for years, and resentments are like the things that keep me in the past, and fear keeps me in the future, and I think harms, it's, you know, sex inventory is not just about relationships, but I think it's anybody who cared about me, I really, I used that against you, if you cared about me, if you really loved me, that was the worst thing that could ever happen to you, because I would just use that against you, you know, I used it to my advantage, selfishness, self-centeredness, I was brutally self-centered, it was always about me, everything was about me, and people suffered, especially the people that cared about me, my parents loved me, and I treated them terribly, I would pretend I'd be there for this and that, and I'd put on a good show, you know, if you asked me to do something, but they'd always be wishing I'd do better, you know, you should go to school, you should do this, and I'd always kind of rally a little bit, and then I'd fail, and kick them one more time, and kick them one more time, and they'd be wishing something better for me, they knew, you know, potential, right, we all know potential, and I just couldn't, I couldn't rally it, and I didn't know why, and so I got, I did a different, I asked Dan, I said, hey, I need to do this four-step, I'm ready to do it, and he says, I never done a four-step, and I was like, that was a piece of information he might want to share from me at the beginning, I didn't, you know, I was like, I thought you had done the steps, but that was fine, he had brought me to that point, and I think it helped him as much as it helped me, then I found a guy who took me through the steps, and he was like, bing, bing, bing, bing, and we started reading, doing the things that I do to people today, and we start to the four-step, and the third-step prayer was the best part, where you get there and you say, relieve me of the bondage of self, and I didn't get it at the time, but I didn't know what I was about to get into, but I knew it was important, because I was suffering, and I wasn't going to, I would go to meetings and share, and flail my arms, I said this morning, I was talking about, you know, nobody would sit next to me, I was just angry, and how long can you live like that, and I'd go home, and the resentments of, this is all my fault, I had the house in foreclosure, my business, I run a flooring business, I worked all the time, I had no money, I was in debt up to my eyeballs, everything was a problem, I had legal issues, tax issues, everything, how do you get out of this mountain, and you chip it away, but first I got to get free and unblock from what wants me, to do something different, that's going to change my life, and we started on this path, and I did that prayer, and I got up and I started writing the four-step, and that resentment is, I look at it like this, when I sit down with guys today, I think about, you know, like, well, I love this, well, I don't have any resentments, I don't have any resentments, I let them all go, really?
I know Bob used to talk about a guy, he's the angriest guy, I know, it's always that guy, I don't have any resentments, nope, I let them all go, it doesn't work that way, I do it this way, like, if you have a dog, let's say you buy a puppy, right, and you bring it home, it's cute, it's a beautiful puppy, and the whole family, bring it in the kitchen, and it poops on the floor, ah, puppies poop, it pooped on the floor, it's cool, you clean it up, and you bring it out in the garbage, ah, it's okay, it's cute, you come back in, and same poop, right place, now you've got the first poop here, that's the resentment, sitting on my shoulder, and now I've got to clean up the second one, and I go, come on, you can't keep pooping like that, you know, ah, they're going to have to puppy, toilet train this dog, and you clean it up, and you go, and you take it out in the garbage, you come back in, and third poop, right there, and now I've got two poops on my shoulder, and one on the floor, and I'm like, okay, it's a cute dog, but, you know, and by the time the fifth poop is, I've got four on my shoulder, and it's the fifth poop, it's the same action, same poop, same heap, same smell, everything's the same, that the first time was just a cute little dog, by the fifth poop, this dog's going back, that's it, no more dogs, that's it, no more puppies, no more dogs, everybody go to bed, that's it, and we're punching holes in the walls, you know what I mean, and that's how it is with resentment, it just keeps me in the back, it's all the things that happen, I remember Don, who was supposed to be here, and he talked about coming home, and, you know, just getting angry, you know, a long day, and bringing the day in the house, and learning to leave, shut the truck off, and say, God, you know, just leave me present when I get in the house, and go in, you know, instead of coming in, and being all from the day, leave the day behind, don't think about what happened yesterday, right here, right now,
[00:25:01]
for the people around you, but I can't do that here, I always thought I could, fear keeps me in the future, I'm constantly thinking of what's going to happen, what's not going to happen, you know, what they're going to do to me, what they're not going to do for me, and it's just, I'm in the past, I'm in the future, and I'm separated from other human beings, and so I started going through that fourth step, and I did it pretty quickly, he had a lot of different, like, work piece sheets, and so I went to his office, and when I finally got through it, and did the SAT, and we did the fifth step, I started to recognize a few things, because we went and looked at it from another angle, and it says in here, the most important part that I learned, it's not, you know, my part or your part, you know, I was talking the other day, and he was talking about his father, he was angry with his father, and he said, but I tried to make the amends, and I made the amends, and I can never do it, I said, what's the problem, you know, I don't sponsor him, he was just talking about it, and he goes, well, every time I make the amends, he starts telling me what I did, and I'm like, well, aren't you supposed to, I sell mine, and isn't he supposed to, you know, tell me what he did, and I said, no, you can't do that, leaving the other person aside entirely, absolutely, I can't look at anything they did, right, and if somebody had done me wrong, and I went and screamed and yelled at them, I'm actually responsible for the screaming and yelling, but I get free when I go up to somebody like that, and I say, you know what, I don't really care what you did, but I came at you very aggressively the other day, and I judged you harshly, and I have no right to do that, and if there's anything I can do to make that right, and they say, well, go screw yourself, well, I'm not going to do that, but if there's anything I can do, you know, make it right, I get free, because a prison needs a jailer, and that's a 24-hour job, and I start letting people out of prison, and I recognize that I started, how many times did I have people that would wrong me for years, and when I dialed it all the way back to the beginning, I did that.
I looked at my wife, who is now my ex-wife, we didn't get along very well, and we're better, better ex, she's a better, I'm a better ex-husband than I was a husband, that's just all there is to it, you know, but she was, she liked to scream, she liked to yell, she still likes to yell this day, but that's okay, it doesn't affect me, and I learned that she was really nice when I met her, she was really, she was just out of college, she loved me like unbelievably, and would do anything for me, and 25 years with a guy like me, that would make anybody a little edgy and angry, you know, and she was like, like this, and I recognized, I did that, I did that, and I got to let her be however she has to work through that, you know, I get calls, my son's 16 now, he's a really good kid, and she'll call me up sometimes, and they'll be fighting, they fight, and he'll call up and go, mom, he's yelling at me this and that, and in my head I want to say, that's why I don't live with her, son, see, see, that's her, that's it, right, it wasn't me, it was her, she did it, you know, how I felt, in my head I go, that's why I'm not married anymore, but I tell him, mom's had a long day, you know, she works up in the Bronx, and has to drive home to Long Island, and there's a lot of traffic, and she works really hard, and she's tired, and you know, tomorrow morning she's going to make you breakfast, and she'll do anything for you, and she loves you, so just don't take it personal, and it took him a little while, and he learned not to take it personal, he just goes, because that was what bothered him, he's like, what did I do, and I said, it's nothing, she's just tired, and I don't take that opportunity to impugn her character to make me look good, and I can't be doing that, and I recognize all those fears that I had, and I was afraid of everything, and I learned that, you know, and it says, when we got cocky, it was worse, when I was drinking, more when I was not drinking, in between, you know, if you cut me off, you know, the resentment is, how dare everybody come, and the fear, you're going to get away with that, and I'd run you off the road, and I'd come up, and I was 290 pounds back then, I had a buzz cut, and a very red face, and I'd come up in your car, and, and the guy would look, I remember the guy looking at me like, and I go, I know what you're thinking, I'm not going to hit you, because I'll go to prison, well, let me tell you, prison is a step up for me, can you imagine that coming at you, like, oh, this is insane, who is this nut, you know, but it was the truth, for me, prison would be a step up, I was miserable, and I terrorized, now, if somebody comes up to me, and I don't, because I don't really react with people that much, in that way, but I've had where people have gotten angry, and they come up, and they get really angry, and the louder they get, the more relaxed I get, because I know, I got you, I know what's going on, and I just smile, and I go, anything I can do, and they hate that, they're like, and they just go storming away, and I'm like, okay, let me know if I can help, you know, you really want to tick people off, just ask them, can I help you, I'd be happy to help you, and I got through that, and I made the amends, you know, you go out and you do six and seven, I ran home and I made the amends to my mother, and my father, my father was in a home by this time, And my father, my father was in a home by this time and she would stay there every night with him.
She went every night with him and made sure the nurses were doing it, he got dementia.
[00:30:03]
So he kind of slowly slipped away. And I went there and I did the amends that you do earlier, recovery. And she said, just keep doing whatever it is you're doing. I had about four months or five at a time. She said, keep doing that. And I was like, okay, cool. And I went around and I started to make other amends and financial stuff. And I'm getting really involved in this. And I had a little neck injury.
Something happened and I got a neck injury and my neck starts to hurt. And they start giving me stuff because there's a lot of pain. I wind up getting surgery. But in the meantime, I'm joining general service. So I'm supposed to be doing service. I'm supposed to be sponsoring people. And I'm kind of M. But I'm getting into general service. And I'm the county committee chair. I mean, my ego, now I'm using AA.
I still got this miserable business. I'm broke. I'm in debt. But I look pretty powerful. I'm going to New York Intergroup. I'm going to put on a thing at Sing Sing. I'm really impressive. And I wind up and I'm working a lot and I'm doing all this stuff. And I'm getting crazy. I'm straightening people out at meetings. Nothing better than that. My ego is humongous. I have great ways of doing it. I can either yell or I can just be really terse.
I love that word, terse. Just to straighten you out. If you go talk at meetings, I really hate when people, because God speaks to us during the meetings, how dare you talk during the meeting. So I wanted to make an announcement. And this is, I've never done it, but I always want to make the announcement and say, and as you know, God speaks to us through the meetings. So between the opening at 7 a.m. and the close at 8 a.m., if there's some diagnosis that keeps you from being quiet for an hour, let us know and we'll make special accommodations for you.
That's how I straighten you out. I've never done that. But I've wanted to. The ego. So at this time, I've got such a big ego. I've been through the steps. I'm kind of sponsoring people. I've made my amends. I'm kind of doing 10 as it goes. I got 11 in the morning. Hey, God, how are you doing? Good morning. Let's go. The nightly review. I fall asleep. I got way away from that fast. And then I wound up, I got so busy and so crazy.
I didn't feel good one day and I went to the hospital and they said that I had too much of this stuff in my system. I didn't want to do the things it took to get myself post-operative. It was neck surgery. I didn't want to do the things. I wanted to work hard and make money. And nothing was working. And I'm starting to really, I'm not going to last much longer. When I get there, they said it was too much and they kind of get it out of my system.
And I realized, wow, what am I doing? And I said, I just want to get it out of my system and I want to go home. They said, well, you should wean off. I go, no, out of my system. I want it out. And I went home and I laid up for a little while and I felt better and I started slowly, but it's hard. I had to rebuild and I realized. But I didn't think it was bad because they were prescribing it, right? No, it wasn't sober behavior.
So it was about a year and I'm still feeling a little edgy and I'm starting to get a little angry and I'm starting to rebuild and I don't want this floor business. I was like, can't I just have a job where they pay you for not, you know, you get days off and why do I have to be working on weekends? I didn't like the way things were. I started to recognize that and I started to make some changes. But then I realized and I was starting to get crazy again and I was almost this close to drinking and I hadn't had anything in my system.
So I was like, what's wrong with me? And something just said, you're not honest. That's not sober. Like I had to change my date. I don't know why. That was for me. And I went to the hospital and I found out it was May 17th that I went. So I said, May 18th, 2011, I started to make some changes and I got a new sponsor and I said, I got to go through the steps again. And I didn't know what it was that was bothering me, but this was a good sponsor.
His name was Big Book Eddie. Anybody whose first name is Big Book, you know they're going to get you through the steps. So Big Book took me through the steps. And it was funny because I think I had about four years at the time and I go and I do another inventory and I write it up and I got my resentments. Man, those resentments were good. I don't know why people are afraid of it. The resentment inventory, you get to judge them on it.
This is what I did today and this is what they did and this is what it affected. You get to do that. We'll look at it later in a little bit, but enjoy it one more time. I used to do that when I get mad at somebody, like in the meeting, that said something and I wanted to punch them out. And I'm like, God, this is wrong. I want to beat up a guy in the meeting. And I say, hold on one more time. And I just picture myself choking him in the meeting and I go, okay, I did it.
And then I say, okay, God, take it away. But I have to do it one more time, you know. I don't know if you'll do that, but that's what I do. You do, right? So, okay, it's not just me. I find a lot of things in this place, all the crazy thinking, I'm not alone, which is great. It's very, very relieving. Big Book took me through the steps and one of the funniest things that happened is he listened to my resentment list go on and on and on.
He starts laughing. I go, what? And he goes, you guys, you're active in service, you haven't had a drink in four years, and, you know, you don't have a lot of meetings, you didn't do all this. And you come to me to go through the steps again. All your resentments are the same. I'm like, what? He says, it's always against AA. All your resentments are against everybody in AA.
[00:35:01]
And I'm like, well, they're doing it wrong. He's like, says who? Me. I say, it was every resentment was against everybody in AA. Don't you understand how this is done? Why don't you listen to me? I know how to do this. I had a guy call me up. I went to the business meeting and they only had the steps and the traditions. And I came in and I said, you know, I have a new business. There's a third shade that we don't have in our meetings.
Now, nobody even knew what the concepts were in the meeting, right? But I knew that. And I didn't even know what the concepts were. I just knew that there was a shade we didn't have. And I said, we should really have the concepts. And they were like, and I knew their reaction because they didn't know. I'd be like, yeah, I agree. Yeah, we got to put this up. Yeah, put these shades up. So they went and they ordered a shade and they put it up.
And a couple of years later, one of my favorite people that I still talk to today that was there when I got there and really nice to me, Eddie, he calls me and he goes, Doug, I was at the beginners meeting at the Eye Opener this morning. I said, yeah? He goes, some idiot thought it was a good idea to put the concepts at a beginners meeting. And I was like, yeah, that's me. And I thought maybe it isn't a good idea.
I didn't know. And I said, yeah, I probably shouldn't do that at a beginners meeting. I don't know. But he was like making fun of this guy. And I told him, I said, yeah, that was my idea. And I told him the story. And he's like, oh, well, I guess it's a good idea. And I went back to the group chair. And I said, you know, maybe we should take the concepts down. And he knew what I was getting at. And he goes, no, Doug, they're staying.
We're going to keep them there. And you can look at them every time you see them. You can remember that business meeting. And they hang there today for me to look at it and remember me going, oh, the concepts. And I didn't even know what I was talking about. But I knew you didn't know I didn't know what I was talking about. So I like to get credit for things I don't do. But I did go through those steps again.
And I got to see about the relationships. The second time around was much more powerful. And who am I to judge who was doing it? And he said in the fear, I had so many fears. How do I get all these fears? I'm living in the future and afraid of everything. And he says, you know, you had a willingness when you came in. And then you started to get some experience, right? Yeah, I had some really good experiences.
He says, you know, you have the willingness to start. That's all you need to start. All right. And then you get a little faith because I start to feel it and I see it works in you. But you got to move into trust. And with all the things that have happened in my life that I'm not even realizing to happen. In this time, I went and I went back to school. I got out of this thing. I took another job. And there's a series of events that miraculous stuff that went boom, boom, boom, boom.
Got me into school and a job driving a taxi. Got out of that business, you know. Wasn't with the wife, but now I was living back with my mom's house. And I got to be of service there. We had expanded the house to have all live there. And then she left. And I was able to be there for my mom and help her. And I was able to be there for my son and be there for my ex-wife. And just do what I had to do.
And I was going to school and driving this taxi. And I met this young lady that is here with me today. I was like, this is a weird experience. She gets in the car and she leaves. And I called up my sponsor. I said, I don't know what that is. This woman was just in my taxi. And I didn't even see her. But when she left, I felt like there was something missing. You know, you ever have that where there's somebody you're just like, whoa, who was that, you know.
And she's sitting here today. I took a year to get to know her. An amazing woman. I just never had experiences like that. And I learned to really care for people. I learned to sit there. But I was still a little judgy. It takes me a long time. I'm a slow learner. And I started to walk away again. You know, I started to do good. I started to get some things. I had that job. It was paying good. I got another job through going to school on an internship.
And it was an amazing series of events that I went. And I only got this job. I wasn't going to get this job. But I went to go speak at a meeting because no one was taking the commitment. And I said, well, no one's going to show up. And let's go down there and I'll go show up. And while I was there, I saw something that led to a series of events that lent me a job that I have today, which is an incredible job.
And they pay me to take days off. It's unbelievable. You know. And it really is a great place to work. And I got another job. I have two jobs. But in all that, I'm starting to do this. I'm busy. And I'm working. And I'm taking care of this kid who's getting older. And he's got baseball. And I'm sponsoring one guy. And I'm feeling all bound up again. And something happened that I kind of compromised my integrity just a little bit.
Nothing major. But I just couldn't understand what was going on. I got frustrated. And I had been talking to somebody over the years here and there. And I ran into him. And he had this way of looking at Alcoholics Anonymous that I really admired. And I called him up and I said, you know, this thing happened. And they're telling me if I tell people if I do this, I could lose everything. And he said, well, if you're honest and you humble yourself and you trust God, what's the difference what happens?
It just flew right out of me. And I went and I came up and I said, hey, look, this happened here and this and that.
[00:40:00]
And right in the middle of it, they go, look, we put you in that position. And they're taking credit for it. And they go, no, no, no. I'm like, no, no, really, I did this thing wrong. And they're like, no, no, don't worry about it. It's fine. Everything's fine. We shouldn't have put you in that circumstance. It's great. Don't worry about it. Everything's fine. I came clean. Everything worked out. So I went and I went through the steps one more time, did a fourth and fifth step.
And I started to go back on some of the original ones. And I never realized that, you know, the resentments I had, I still had this resentment against my mother. I lived with her. And she used to make me she had this thing because she grew up with an alcoholic. And if you live in that, she had to take care of the family. So she's always into everybody's business and always trying to solve problems.
And I don't like people solving my problems. And she'd come into a room and she's just like, you know, I felt negative. That's how I felt. And I don't know why. This is wrong. I have this buzz about her that's just, and I know it's wrong. And I go back and we go through this thing and through the resentments. And I still had a couple other ones. And we talked and some fears. And I saw it completely different.
And I went back and I knew I had to make amends to mom really different this time. You know, sometimes you have to revisit that. It was Thanksgiving a number of years ago. And it was just she and I. Nobody there. And we had dinner. I make a full Thanksgiving dinner for like 30 people even though it's just me and mom. I was like, well, we're going to have a lot of leftovers. And my son was with his mom.
And after then it just said now's the time. And I said, you know, I did that amends thing back then. But I kind of went through these steps again. And you know kind of what we do a little bit. I really want to just say that, you know, I really you've done so much for me. And I've treated you so poorly. And is there anything that you wanted to say then? And she goes, well, you know, that first time I was just happy that you were sober.
But you've been doing this a long time. And I think it's okay. And there's a couple things I need to say. And she laid it out. You know, when I was in that jail, she would see every night on TV the overcrowding and all the violence that was going on there. I think I'm not hurting anybody. My mom didn't sleep for months. That's where our son was. I'm not hurting anybody. When we got divorced, a lot of things happened, and they blamed her.
And she got through all this. And I listened for a long time. And I just heard what she had to say, and she was able to come and tell me all this stuff because I went back through these steps again and did a fourth and fifth step and really looked at it, you know, leaving the other person aside. You know, she did nothing wrong. She was just always there for me. She was there for other people, but this is the most powerful one.
And to this day, the things I laugh, she comes in and she does the things that used to annoy me, and it just passes right through me. She could do anything, and I look at it like in real time, and I watch it. And the thing of it is, I'm not in the past remembering all the other times. I'm not in the future being afraid something's going to happen. I'm not separated from anybody. I'm right here right now.
And right here right now, I'm right here for you. And that's the purpose of the fourth and fifth step, right, to be here now, to be spiritually awake. And the best thing that ever happened to me was sponsoring people and hearing fifth steps and learning that I'm not alone. That's the powerful one. I take people now, and I see them, and I say, what you need to do is to work as hard as you can as if it would make your job.
Like, when I say your job, you know, you see people walking. I have a guy just recently. He has this woman that he's really madly in love with, and she was willing to let him move in. But she wants him. She knows you've got to go through those steps. And he's like, well, I'm doing it differently. And he starts fighting with her right in front of me. I looked at him. I said, do you love this woman? I know he loves her.
But he was balking at the step. And I took him aside. I said, what you need to do is act like your job said, okay. In six months, you have to go through those steps and be halfway through amends and be sponsoring somebody. And then you can keep your job, plus you'll get a $100,000 bonus. Just some arbitrary thing. Now, if you got that deal, it would take you a month, right? Absolutely. If you got that deal, your job, and that was the requirement of your job, it would be done.
So what is the holdup? What's stopping people from doing that? What's stopping me from doing that? It's because I don't believe, step one. Maybe I'm still not fully believed. I don't concede to myself that I'm dead, and there's nothing I can do about it. And without that power greater than myself, this isn't going to go well. And it wants me dead. I took a guy, the first person I took through the steps that actually did it.
There's always a few. Everybody worries about, I don't know if I can do that. When I'm sitting down with somebody going through the book, they always have that look on their face, and you can see the eyes go, and I go, I know what you're thinking. I'm doing this with you, and you've got to do this with somebody else, and you don't want to do this with somebody else. And they're like, yeah, kind of.
And I go, well, you do, but not today. So don't worry about it. And they kind of go, okay, I guess not. But that is kind of scary, because I'm sitting there, and I know a lot of this, because I've done it a bunch. I'm sitting there and I know a lot of this because I've done it a bunch and I can talk the history and stories and we go through it and we have fun and we talk about an experience and I go through that and I get the first guy that actually went through it for the
[00:45:01]
first time was amazing and he was different than me. He had a grad student, which I am now, thank you to the program of recovery, I actually went to school and last May I graduated after 10 years of going and just doing this and doing that and I'm like going, how did I get here? When I started, I could barely read and now I got this degree and all this great stuff and I didn't do that but I did it while I was looking out and trying to help someone else.
Every time, the more I did for someone else, the more that happened for me and if I tell you that when you're new, you're like, that's nuts. I need three jobs, this is what I need, no, you don't. You need to really buy this package, right? I think that Norm used to say that, buy the package, unbelievable. He looked like Schroeder, remember that, no, it was the guy, Sherman, Sherman from that cartoon, remember when Bullwinkle and he was like, he was an engineer, he had glasses, looked just like Sherman.
If you know who it is, it's pretty funny because he was like Brainiac and with the dog and he would go and a professor and anyway, so he was just nothing that I could relate to, I thought and I took him through the steps and his fifth step and this guy who looked different than me and always did everything right, he had a family and a big house and a career and he was brilliant and he was as pathetic as I was.
I mean, we both shared the same stuff and I could say, I think of myself and I'm like, if you went back to like Egypt 5,000 years ago on the Nile, right, and you could look into the brain of that person, it's me, it's probably on the Nile going, how come that guy has got more property than me and why, you know, his kids, my kids are real bratty and how come they don't do this and how come the government do this, like the same complaints, resentments and fears all through, it's one person.
I started to see that, it was an amazing thing, he's still sober today, I don't sponsor him, I don't see him much, he kind of moved away but I started to do that and I recognized the more that I did that, the more that I got free and when Mari talked about that, that discontent that I felt, I always felt like there was something hanging over, there was something wasn't right, you know, it was still a little peace because I was so used to another shoe dropping, I don't know what it is but it's alcoholism, right, and it's just and it was like slowly fading away.
And one day I looked around and it was gone and when they say it's like a life beyond your wildest dreams, I don't think it's what they told me, like I hear people say, well, I got up and I fed my kids today, he's got six weeks over, you know, life beyond my wildest dreams, I'm like that's a pretty standard issue dream that you can go feed your kids, I don't think that's wild dream, you know, it was just a standard issue dream, a wild dream is the dreams I had like I'm going to be pitching for the Mets on opening day, that's a wild dream, right, but it doesn't say wild dream, it says beyond your wildest dreams.
Anything I could see is a wild dream at the very least, anything I could conceive, anything I could think of, this is something I didn't know existed and what it was is that some days I just sit here and I go, I'm just here, I don't think about things I could be doing or should be doing, I just think about what I'm, I'm not even thinking, I'm just doing and sometimes I'm just overwhelmed with the presence of just being, it's an amazing thing and I have those God spots and it doesn't, you know, I would never talk like this and if I look back and said you'd be standing up here talking like this, I'd be like you're out of your mind, I don't even want to do that, that's crazy, but it's everything and it just gets me like where I have no words, it's like when my son was born, that was one of the first points, I was hung over, you know, she had set up in the house, I come home and she was saying, oh, we got to go and I'm like, no, the baby's coming tomorrow, not today and she's like, no, we got to go and I'm like, I already had started drinking, you can't shut me down, I know this and I'm like, oh, we got to roll set up and I go, I got to get something to eat and so I go out to the bar, that's where we go for something to eat, right, the bar and I tell everybody my son's being born and so they buy you shots, you know, because I'm having a baby and so I'm hung over the next day and I'm so hung over and I'm sitting there but I still, when I saw him, I was like, I took my breath, I had no words, it was, and it was, I always remembered that feeling, there's something more, I knew there was something more, I just didn't know how to get to it, you know, and so I'm here and today I do, I sponsor people, we had a meeting over my house on Friday nights, we started a year and a half ago and we turned it into a group and we called it Island of Enthusiasm and you were talking about enthusiasm today and Theos and I love the way, I love the way Rich talks and I'm very impressed by anybody who can work tabula rasa into a sentence, you know, that was pretty impressive, I was like, that's pretty good and now I just did it, so cool, I can always ride on someone else's coattails, happy to do it but the enthusiasm and that's from Clancy saying pockets of enthusiasm, that bits of like really excited about a sitting at my dining room table and the purpose of that meeting was every Friday night we'd come together and learn the little bits of the book so that you would feel more comfortable
[00:50:02]
sponsoring someone else, I just wanted everybody to get more comfortable so when they sat down, the more you feel like you kind of feel comfortable with it, you can do it, right, go through and just get little bits, I'm like make little notes and think about it so you can feel more comfortable, you can't go wrong if you sponsor and really go and, you know, with God's help, you can't go wrong, just help somebody, take them through it and things I wouldn't do, I'm so busy, I have two jobs, my son's 16, he's on two baseball teams, I'm running around doing all this stuff and I got a guy who wants to meet and sit with me on Saturday morning, I sit with him Saturday morning, Monday morning another guy comes over, I have to be at work and I got to run around, I sit with that guy for an hour and a half and I don't have time for that but I know that I do have time for that, I don't have to make time for that, right, and on some days, I go to work on Sundays and I remember one Sunday that I had a guy coming over for a fifth step and I'm like, alright, come at 6 and that part of me is like going, I don't have time for this, I don't have time to do this fifth step but I do have time and I got 6 o'clock in the morning and it took a long time but we pray ahead of time and I go, whatever needs to be learned, you know, whatever I can do and bring to this, please help me, you know, bring to this what I can bring and we pray and we do that and it took a long time, it was about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, it was 8 hours, 8 hours of talking about things, it was a long, long, long, it shouldn't be that long but sometimes it is, mine was about that long and I never struggled and I had a lot to do that day and I had to go to work and I was going to be behind and I said, it doesn't matter, this comes first or I don't have that and it's easy to think but I know that in here and I'll never forget that day, I went to work when he was done, I didn't struggle, I went and I started going to work and I started doing paperwork and I type faster now, I used to be this, I'm like, I don't know how that happened and about 9 o'clock at night, I had an hour to go and I was done with everything, somehow I get more efficient when I'm looking out and trying to help you, I don't know why that is, I believe that's God and it isn't a God I can understand, I think we take the third step, God of your understanding and transpose that into the second step, like you got to understand something and I hear people, I go, what step are you working on, I'm on step 2 and I go, really, what are you doing, well, I'm trying to understand God, I'm like, really, well, if that ever happens, you give me a call, I'll be right over, I've been doing this for 15 years and I try to do it the best I can, God is bigger than anything I could ever even conceive of and I know it less, it's not a no and it's experiential, I have unbelievable experiences, you know, my wife was, my ex-wife called last night and my son is out for the first time, going into Huntington and he sped away with a guy in a pickup truck, he's getting picked up by people driving cars, trucks and they sped away to go hang around Huntington, he's a good kid, he was home at 11, I didn't worry about it, normally I'd be in fear, you know, I intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle me, I couldn't have predicted any of this and it all started with somebody working with me and me working with them and this resentment and fear that I was locked up in, owned me and you took it away, you showed me how to get free for this God that wanted nothing for me, I think it's, there's somebody else who wrote that God can only love, he can't not love me, he can only want the best, there's no way he can want anything less but the best for me and there's another thing written that I heard recently that says, I want the God, I want God, not my idea of God and I know we say, you know, the conception of God but that's like how I perceive it but I want God, not my idea of God, not what I thought God was, this punishing entity, it's everything is perfect God, you know, it says the joy of living and I say to people, you know, enjoy your day, I said this to a gas station guy one night and I stopped and I was a God spot and I said, why do I say that? I just start saying, I've been saying for the longest time, I don't say have a good day or whatever, I just say enjoy your day because I don't know if it's going to be a good day or a bad day, that's up to you or whatever but whatever it is, if you can enjoy it, I wish that for you, all I want to do is enjoy the day and whatever it comes, you know, I want God, not my idea of God, I want Lisa, not my idea of Lisa, I want my son Doug, not my idea of Doug, I want you, not my idea of you and if I can live with that, you're absolutely amazing to me, you know, we have this fellowship and that's what that reading, it grows up among us, you know, we have these great conversations, you have two guys, if you, I always think about if you go and play golf with a bunch of people, right, and they, you have two guys playing golf that know each other and me and Rich never met each other and Richie's there and hey, how you doing and maybe he has a necklace with the circle and triangle, I give him the high sign, you know, and boom, I know him like he knows me and those other guys would be like, these guys never met, really, how do they, it'd be like we've known each other our whole life and it's different, like it says, it's
[00:55:04]
not like the shipwreck, you know, there was a plane that went down in the Hudson River and all those people survived and they have that thing that they went through together and they can get together annually and meet and talk about it but we have the deep level of something inside that we know that we went through, the suffering and the suffering and then the escape from this that we can share in this fellowship and you gave that to me and I can, I woke up one morning and I'll give you this last God spot I had, it was a few weeks ago and I've learned when I went back to my sponsor, I was very big, he says, how's your 11th step and I said, well, you know, I'm in meditation all the time or something, I said something weird and he's like, you remember page 86 and sent me back doing that and for the last five years or so I've been doing that every morning and every night and I get on my knees and I say, I stopped saying prayers in any way, it says that one thing he showed me was that this 11th step that it should be underlined only, praying only for the knowledge of his will and the power to carry that out and I just get in, I do some prayers and I read that and I ask him, I say, please God, just show me how to be useful and a couple weeks ago I'm on my knees and I was like, I could never, I said, please and just, I was like almost begging, I was overwhelmed and I said, if I, every minute of every day I did everything I could, I couldn't come close to giving you what you've given to me, show me how to just go in that direction, I was just so overwhelmed with gratitude and you gave me that and I really appreciate it and it's a wonderful life and thank you so much.