Audio
Transcript
Source: Mike F – Myrtle Beach – 2010 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: mike-f-myrtle-beach-2010-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:58:57
============================================================
Jay told me I was going to be sharing this meeting last night, and I got the luxury of meeting our speaker about an hour and a half ago. And I have to tell you, I'm excited about hearing him. I really am. And, you know, it's one of those things, whenever you come to a conference and we start talking to one another, we realize that we all have the same disease. And we have that fellowship where we just look at each other in the eyes.
And within minutes, I caught that from Mike. And without any further ado, I'd like to introduce Mike from Chandler, Arizona. My name is Mike and I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is April 23rd, 1985. And for that, I'm grateful. And I share that because I got sober in Texas. And that's what they do there. It reminds me, there was a story down there of a clubhouse down in Amarillo. And they were going around the room introducing themselves one night.
And, you know, different ones introduce themselves different ways. And this guy, Ed, says, I'm Ed, and I haven't found it necessary to have a drink for 14 years, six months, nine weeks, three days and four hours. And the guy up front turned around and said, Ed, I saw you last Saturday and you were so drunk, you couldn't even get down the street. He said, yeah, but it wasn't necessary. I am convinced that every drink of alcohol I had was necessary to get me to and keep me in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I'm grateful that Alcoholics Anonymous was here when I was ready. You know, earlier today, someone said you get nervous. And I'm a little nervous that someone about halfway down is going to say stand up. But really, I don't. I've got a pretty good idea what I'm going to say. And you have no idea what you're going to hear. So if anyone should be nervous, it should be you and not me. But I do feel a little bit like a mosquito in a nudist camp.
I know what to do, I'm just not sure where to start. When I was seven years old, I lit the house on fire. Now, that didn't make me an alcoholic. But I'm going to kind of give you a picture of what that was like. I lit the house on fire and then I realized what I had done. And then I'm across the street and I've got the street blocked off and the fire trucks are there. I come from a family of seven.
I grew up outside of Buffalo, New York in a little town called East Aurora. And the fire trucks are there. I'm sitting on the neighbor's porch with my mother and some of my brothers and the neighbors. And there's panic in the neighborhood. They're chopping down the door and running in with hoses. And I'm sitting on the porch watching this. There's only one thing going on in my head. And that is there is no way I'm ever telling anyone that I did this.
Now, as I mentioned, that didn't make me an alcoholic. But what started happening is I began to keep secrets. And that was a secret. And a few weeks later, I was up at one of the local stores, a five and dime store, and there was something in there that I saw that I wanted and I didn't have the money for it. So I took it. And I knew it was wrong because I was being raised in a good home. My dad was an alcoholic.
But he was sober in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. My mother is a member of Al-Anon. And my mother is still living. She's got 46 years now in Al-Anon. And when I see her, I tell her she's still not well. Well, and I do. I want to recognize the Al-Anons tonight and all of the non-alcoholics that are here for support are here to participate in the conference. And I think it's wonderful. I want to thank Jay and the committee for extending the invitation to me to allow me to come and share with you all the way from warm Arizona.
The beach is beautiful. You know, Arizona is an absolute fantastic place to live if you love the beach and hate the ocean. But I love the ocean, too, and it's really good to be here. And, you know, I got sober in Texas. And if I ever get to that in my talk tonight, you'll hear a little more about it. But my sponsor used to share a story about this guy Lance and Chris.
[00:05:02]
And Lance was the AA and Chris was a new Al-Anon. And she was going to a lot of Al-Anon meetings and Lance was bouncing in and out of AA and really having a tough time. And one day they started fighting. It was on a Saturday afternoon. And Lance came home pretty drunk. And the fight started and it went on for a couple of hours. And finally Lance had had all he could take. Now Chris had been going to Al-Anon.
They had been talking to her about tough love. So Lance went in the bathroom. He turned the gas on. He got the tub full, got in the tub and laid down. He's going to die. Well, a little while later Chris got curious and she went over and she banged on the door and said, Lance, what are you doing in there? And he said, I've got the gas on. I'm committing suicide. She said, well, put some towels around the bottom of the door.
It's making the cat sick. You know, I grew up in a good home. My dad was a very active member of Alcoholics Anonymous. It wasn't unusual in our home, as we were getting ready for school as kids, to have a drunk sitting at the kitchen table in the morning shaking, you know, waiting to get fed or to be brought to a meeting. The fellowship, I got to see that very young. I got to grow up with that. I got to experience seeing families restored and put back together and the laughter that comes from that.
And I also got to see the tragedy of Alcoholics Anonymous, when my dad would experience the death of maybe someone he was sponsoring or those type of things. So I got to see all of the experiences that you can see from the outside of Alcoholics Anonymous, kind of looking at it as a kid growing up. And my behavior was not conducive to the way that I was brought up. And I thought I was a disappointment.
And I really felt like I was always disappointing someone. And I knew that I was a disappointment because my behavior didn't measure up to what I thought they wanted. What was really going on was my behavior didn't measure up to what I thought I wanted. And I began to develop this image of myself that wasn't good. And I was doing these things and I was keeping secrets And I was taking on the mental responsibility of every problem that was in the house.
And my dad hadn't been sober long, so there was fighting and things like this still going on. And I'd lay up in bed scared, thinking that I was the cause of it. And I slept in a room with two brothers. So we didn't have a huge house, but we had a lot of kids. So seven kids, so it was me and my two brothers in the back bedroom. And I'd joke around and I'd say I'd never slept alone until I was married.
So I got to experience this. When I was in second grade, the Catholic school asked me not to return. And I thought that, you know, I disappointed them. So I ended public school. And, you know, my brother John had a First Communion. And I remember John was in second grade, so I was in about first grade. And at John's First Communion, we went and stole some beer out of the… They had a little bucket of beer for the guests.
And we went and stole some and we went and hit it and drank it. And, you know, I didn't dance with all the girls or wear lampshades on my head or anything like that. I really don't even remember what happened when I drank it. Other than, without telling John, I went back and took some more so I could have it the next day. And I remember hiding that. And I think that's significant in my story that, you know, my story's not real macho about drinking.
I started very young. But I hit it. Now when we'd get together, you know, normal kids get together and play on the playground. We'd get together in the field and play baseball or basketball and do this. I'd get a water bottle and I'd fill it with alcohol. Because what that alcohol was doing for me, it was making me be able to perform. And if you're my size and you want to play basketball, you need a little boost.
And so I found that it was working for me. And every chance I could get to have alcohol, my older brother, his friends were old enough to buy it. So I was able to get it. I never had a problem getting alcohol. And I tried out for the traveling team of the town there. And it was a basketball team. And I really wanted to make it. And I was showing up to practice every day and running hard and doing everything I was supposed to do.
I even would hide my cigarettes. And I walk in the locker room one day just in time to see this guy putting a lid back on a mayonnaise jar.
[00:10:08]
And I said, what are you doing? What have you got there? And he said, oh, Mike, come here. And he opened that jar up and he gave me that and I drank it. And that was whiskey. And my basketball career ended. I had found my answer. And I started drinking as often as I could. Now, when you're 12 and 13 years old, you're not a daily drinker. And you're not a social drinker. You just drink when you can.
And it started to interfere with school because they don't like you to show up while you're drinking. So I found another chemical that could help me do that during the day. So I'd take all kinds of barbiturates so I could go to school. And then on the weekend I would drink. And that was kind of what happened. Now, here's how macho my story is. My first detox was in children's hospital. You can't be too macho with that, you know.
Where are you going to go with that? Well, I'm in children's hospital for eight days. And they didn't have a detox ward there yet. They probably do now. You know, my dad and his sponsor and some of the AA folks would come and see me. And they would share with me in a general way some of the things that they had experienced. And they offered me some hope. And they suggested that I would go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I thought that perhaps what they were doing is telling me if I went to AA they'd get me out of the hospital early. So I would have agreed to anything. And they also asked me to go to counseling. I started going to counseling. And the counselor and I had built such a good rapport that a few weeks after my first counseling session, we were smoking weed together. It was a new therapy. And I got to go to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And it was in the bottom of a police station, Orchard Park, New York. It was my dad's home group. And I remember it was a Friday night at 9 o'clock. I went with him and his sponsor. And we walked down the wooden stairs. And a small ceiling with a smoke-filled room and coffee and donuts over on the table. And it was a great meeting. People knew me. I think they thought my dad was bringing one of his kids.
At least that's what's in my head. You know, they all probably knew. And, you know, when I got out of the car, I'm looking around to make sure nobody sees me. You know, I don't want them to see me going into this Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I'd already been in detox and children's hospital. And, you know, I went around that room that night. And this one said, I'm Bob and I'm an alcoholic and I'm Dorothy.
I'm an alcoholic. And it came to me. And I said, I'm Mike. And I'm a problem drinker with alcoholic tendencies. Now, I wasn't trying to be cute or pretty or funny. I didn't want to be an alcoholic. I absolutely did not want to be an alcoholic. I would have been anything but an alcoholic. I didn't want to be different. And in that room that night, I remember like it was yesterday, some of the people sharing with me and they said some really weird things.
They said stuff like, if you waddle like a duck and quack like a duck, you're probably a duck. That was so far over my head. I mean, I like went home and I'm looking in the mirror. They said, it's the first drink that gets you drunk. I'm thinking, they never drank with me. It just didn't make sense to me. But they did say, keep coming back. I want to share something before I go any further for the benefit of the newcomers here.
Anything that I share tonight is my opinion. It's my opinion of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's my opinion of what we do when we're here. And I share in a general way what it was like and what happened and what it's like today for us. It's also my opinion of my story. Because you could ask some family members and they'd give you an entirely different version. But this is my opinion of my story.
This is how I remember it. And I went to those meetings and I said, keep coming back. And I did. I kept coming back and I would leave the meeting and I would be sicker because I had selective hearing and I would hear things like, you don't drink and you go to the meeting. So I wouldn't drink and I'd go to the meeting. I'd go home and want to die. And I'd think, man, I've got to be different than you.
Because you're happy. Now I went to meetings for 10 years. I never got 30 days. I never got 30 days sober. They told me things that would happen. They said,
[00:15:03]
kid, if you keep drinking, this is what's going to happen to you. And I didn't, you know, maybe they didn't say it that way. Maybe what they were really saying was, Mike, this is our experience. See, Alcoholics Anonymous isn't a program of instruction. It's a program of shared experience. And they were sharing with me their experiences. And I was thinking, they're telling me that this is what's going to happen.
And I'm not proud to tell you that over the next 10 years, many of the things that they shared with me that would happen, happened. Now, I got to go to the psychiatric ward. That was an interesting ride. I remember there was like about a 20-year-old girl doing the intake, and I'm trying to convince her that I would be a good catch. I had selective hearing. What I was hearing was, don't drink, go to a meeting.
And I wouldn't drink. I'd go to a meeting. Every time I stopped drinking, I'd get sicker. I wouldn't get better. I'd come in here. You'd get a 30-day chip. I'd get a resentment. You'd get a cake. I'd think you're lying. You'd get married. I'd be jealous. You'd get a job. I'd be angry. See, I was a victim. I was looking at what everybody else was doing. I was looking at how you looked. You looked so beautiful, and I felt so ugly. I felt like such a disappointment.
I knew I was a disappointment. I couldn't measure up to what I wanted. How could I possibly measure up to what you wanted? And every time something was good, somehow I found a way to bring it down on my head. The greatest joy, the greatest accomplishment that I ever had before I came to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and got sober was I graduated from high school. And I remember telling my kids today, I tried to explain to them that that really is a super huge accomplishment for a guy like me, because I didn't go. And that's hard to do.
And when I did, I was intoxicated. And they gave me a diploma. You know, I picked up many nicknames while I was in high school. F. and all kinds of stuff. Well, that was all good. But the day of my graduation, on the way to graduation, I stopped at the local bar and I had a couple shots of wild turkey, because you could drink when you were 18 and I was 18. So it was fine for me to stop, but I had been drinking in the bars for a couple of years because all my brother's friends were the bartenders.
Well, anyway, I'm getting ready. They call my name and I'm crossing the stage. Now out in the audience is my mom and my dad and my grandmother and probably a couple other relatives. And I'm about halfway across that stage and what I hear is some one of the people that knew me yelled one of my nicknames as loud as he could. And that was drugs. And before I got that diploma, I knew one more time that I was nothing more than a disappointment to everyone.
And that's how I felt. That's how I felt at all of the events that happened. April 21st, 1985, I broke into a house in downtown Buffalo. And I broke into that home because I knew the guy that lived there had a gun and I wanted to kill myself. I had finally gotten enough courage to commit suicide. I had been through enough. I wanted the pain to stop. I had been in and out of the hospitals many times.
I had been to AA. I had been to NA. And that's another thing. There are so many 12-step groups. There's like 543 or something. They've got a new one. It's Paranoia Anonymous. Yeah, they've got an unlisted number. They don't tell anybody where they meet. Anyway, I break into this house and I'm going through. I'm trying to find this gun and I can't find it. And it's getting to be daylight and I'm looking out the window. I'm on the top story of this house.
I'm looking out the window. I'm going to try to calculate if I dive out head first, am I going to die or am I going to flop around on the sidewalk in pain? And I did not want any more pain. Now, this might have been a hallucination. I see three ladies walking down the street wearing these funny church hats. And I thought of my grandmother when I was a little kid coming over to the house on Sundays with her friends and they'd all be wearing these church hats.
And I thought of church. And for the first time in a very, very long time, I knelt down by myself in that room and I said the same prayer that probably every person in this room has said, whether you're an alcoholic or not. And that was just, God help me. I'm sure I've probably said that 7,000 times before.
[00:20:03]
But for some reason, that prayer of desperation that morning was coming from a place within me that I had never yet experienced. Now, the room didn't light up. I didn't get a great wind. But some things began to happen. Later that day, I called the only person left that I thought would answer the phone when I called, and that was my dad. And I told him where I was and that I needed help. He agreed to meet me the next day. And he and another member of Alcoholics Anonymous met me in a diner and they did a 12-step call. It wasn't the first one they had ever done on me.
But they met me in a diner and we talked about my options, and I didn't have any. And they tried a few things to get me some help, and one was, and I'll share this. We made an arrangement through someone, through the director of the Council on Alcoholism, to get me into the hospital. And I showed up at the Erie County Medical Center, and I was very, very sick. And I had my little bag with my toothbrush in it. And the dude that was the admissions counselor came out, and he greeted me in the hallway. And when he greeted me, he had his hands up like this, and he said, you're not coming in here. We can't help you. You've been here too many times.
And I left there with a feeling of hopelessness, unlike anything I had ever experienced. What do we do when we haven't treated our alcoholism and our life has plummeted out of control down to a bottom that's incomprehensible to us? We drink. There was a taxi cab in front of the place, and I said, take me to a bar. I didn't care where he took me. And he dropped me in a bar, and I had 10 bucks my dad had given me for smokes for while I was in the hospital. I ordered a drink.
It was a beautiful afternoon. It was April 23, 1985. And the door of that bar was open, and the sun was coming down, and a city bus pulled up. And it was an old lady trying to get on the bus, and she fell. And I walked out of there, and I lifted her up and helped her get on the bus. And I followed her onto the bus, and I've never gone back for that drink. Had I known that was the last drink for me, at least till this date, I would probably still be there trying to get it right.
I would have wanted my last drink to be an event. I wouldn't have recognized that that action that I took was an event. Bill W. talked about Ebby coming to him, and Ebby said, Bill, it's a new kind of giving. It's a giving without expectation of return. That was probably the first time that I had done something for someone with no expectation of return. Maybe that act of kindness was the beginning of my sobriety. I don't know.
I'm grateful today that I've been taught the things I've been taught, and I recognize maybe what had happened then. I'm certain two or three days before, I would have gone out there and grabbed that lady's purse and ran. I don't know why I didn't do that. I helped her on the bus. I haven't had to finish that drink. They didn't really know what to do with me. He thought of this guy down in Texas, Big John, and he called John up.
He half expected John wouldn't be available or around because John traveled quite a bit. He told John what was going on, and John knew me. I had gone to meetings at his ranch in 1976. John said, send the kid down here for two weeks. I'll see if he wants this deal. On May 5, 1985, I arrived in Abilene, Texas, and I was greeted at the airport by Big John and two other members of Alcoholics Anonymous.
They always came for me in groups. I'm not sure why. But they took me to a meeting that night up in Brownwood, and on the way to the meeting, Big John looks at me and he says, kid? He always called me kid. He actually had two names for me. He called me kid, and my sponsor Howard has asked me not to tell you what the other name was. So I don't do that anymore. And Howard spoke here last year, and he said to say hello to all his friends here in Myrtle Beach.
And I also have a home group. Howard and I both belong to the same home group. It's in Gilbert, Arizona. It's called We Ain't Dead Yet. And if you ever make it out to the Phoenix area, we'd love to have you come and visit our home group.
[00:25:07]
After that meeting that night, well, on the way to the meeting, John says, kid? If it comes to you, give him a sobriety date if you've got one, and then be quiet. And he might not have said it quite that way. But it was fine with me, because my vocabulary was very limited. Then I could get about a seven-word sentence out, and three of them started with F. So they really didn't want to hear what I had to say anyway.
Well, we got back to John's apartment that night, a little one-bedroom apartment in Bangs, Texas. I don't know if anybody's ever been to Bangs, Texas. If you have, I apologize. There's like 300 people and 600 sheep. I used to say nervous sheep, but I don't do that anymore. Anyway, we got back to John's apartment that night after the meeting. John was a big man, and to me he was a giant of a man. And he's pacing, and I'm sitting on the couch and I'm sick, and he's pacing.
And he says, how long you been around the deal, kid? And with as much ego as you can have. When you weigh 90 pounds, everything you own is in a cardboard box, and you're wearing someone else's pants. I said, oh, about 10 years. He said, I don't know if you've got the guts it takes to make it. But if you do, we can show you by living proof how you never have to live this way again. And if you want to get sober, I'll go to hell and back with you, and if you don't, you can go to hell alone.
I'm waiting for welcome to Texas. A few minutes later, he said, kid, you are nothing but a thief. He said, you are the worst kind of thief, because you stole from those you love the most their right to happiness. If you read Pass It On, there's a page in there where Bill W. talks about Ebby entering the cave. And leading him out to the sunlight of the spirit. When John faced me with the truth about myself, that I had become nothing more than a thief.
And a thief of the worst kind, because I had stole from everyone their right to happiness. People that wanted to help me, I pushed them aside. If you came to me and said, Mike, we want to help you, I'd say, get out of here, the only one with a problem is you. Leave me alone. Can't you see if you just give me some money, give me a place to live, bail me out of this jam, keep me out of trouble, get me a job, I'm going to do better next time, I promise.
You just got to help me, you just got to believe in me. This time it's going to be different. And he said that, and it was like he was leading me out of the cave of despair, where I was wrapped in just agony. And he said, come on, you can do it. Come on. The next morning, he woke me up. I don't think John ever slept. I really don't. I mean, I had a one bedroom apartment. He gave me the bed. He took the couch.
He invited me for two weeks. I stayed for two years. Come on, kid, let's go. Where are we going? You're 80. I don't know anybody in Texas. We got people to see, places to go, things to do. Let's go. And he dragged me out of bed and he dragged me down to his best friend's house. This man's name was Bill O. And Bill was one of the original tapers for our fellowship. And we pulled up in front of Bill's house, the Midwest Tape Library to be exact.
And John said, Mike, this is the largest AA tape library in the world. And I'm like, so? And we go in and I meet Bill. Now, some of you might have known Bill, Bill Arbutus. And Bill had one arm and one eye. And he always wore a jacket, too. And John introduces me to Bill, and I'm thinking, I nicknamed Bill immediately, Grumpy, okay?
[00:30:00]
And that was my nickname for Billy. Well, and we're drinking instant coffee. Now, let me give you a little better picture, too. And for the benefit of the newer, younger folks, instant coffee's like warm water with dirt in it, okay? And you'd mix it up, and you'd drink it, and you wouldn't complain, okay? Bill got sober October 21st, 1951, and John got sober October 28th, 1951, so Bill had one week on John, and he never let him forget it.
We're sitting in that library that day, and, you know, I told you a few minutes ago that I could get, like, a seven-word sentence out, and three of them would start with F. Well, Bill and John are talking, and they're probably talking about some of their friends, okay? Bill W., Abby, you know, Lois, Smitty, all the people that they knew. John was friends with Bill D., A.A. number three. So they're talking, A.A., and I'm supposed to sit there and try to absorb some of this, and I thought that it was my turn.
That wasn't really well thought out, I can guarantee you. So I volunteered one of my sentences. Bill was not impressed. He took his finger, and he started pounding it on the table. And he said, young man, the first thing we clean up in here is our mouth. And I'm thinking, grumpy. Well, John and I left. A little while after that, we got out to the car, and, you know, I was starting to feel kind of comfortable with John.
I had known him, and he was kind of easy to talk to and laugh with, and I said, what's up with grumpy? I'm 25 years old, and you guys are going to try to tell me how to talk? He said, kid, this deal saved our lives, and it might save yours. What Bill's really talking about is he wants you to be a good example. You might be the only big book that some new guy or girl gets to see, and he wants you to do a good job.
He wants you to be respectful of the men and women that came before us, and he knows that you need to change, and that's a great place to start. And I bought into it, and from that day to this, I've never used profanity at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I don't do that to brag on how great Mike is. I do it because that's what I was taught, and I think that we can get along just fine teaching some people that we need to clean up some of this stuff.
You know, and I think that's a good example for me to try to be today, and I'm grateful that John took the time to share that with me and to let me know that that was important. We went to a lot of meetings, an awful lot of meetings. I was unemployable for most of that two years, and he would drag me. He spoke at conferences, and he would drag me around and let me drive, and it was amazing. It was like AA school on wheels.
I mean, I'd be driving, and he'd be reading me the big book or 12 and 12 or as Bill sees it, and then he'd be quizzing me, you know, what's Dr. Bob's address, you know. Man, today, I truly am so grateful. You know, I read the big book because I heard people talking about reading the big book at meetings, and I thought, well, that would be a good thing for me to do because they're all talking about it, and I could impress John with it, so I did, and I read it.
Well, I read the first 164 pages. To me, that was the big book. And I remember I said, John, I did it, and he said, what? And I said, I read it, and he said, what? And I said, the big book, and he said, oh, good kid. I read Moby Dick, and I don't remember a damn bit of it. You've got to study that book. What do you think we're doing the next day? We're sitting in his living room studying the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and he was taking the time to answer my questions and suggest that I get and stay out of the debating society.
He was helping me to understand what was in that book, and there were some things that I read that made tremendous sense to me, and there were some things that I read that made no sense to me. And I remember reading in the doctor's opinion where it talked about a psychic change, and I thought, that's cool, I want one of them. And then after that it said, the only thing necessary to get this was to follow a few simple rules.
So I had to begin to look at some of the things that these men and women were doing around me, and this book was suggesting, for me anyway, that some kind of rules to my life, kind of a guide for me to live by. And I began to do that, and I began to get a little bit better.
[00:35:01]
See, I didn't get better by Thursday night. He used to say that all the time. Kid, you ain't going to get this thing by Thursday night. We get better a little at a time, and that's how I got better. A little bit at a time, a little bit. And I didn't even know I was getting better. It's amazing. I still thought I was this stinking bum that came in. I'd get a phone call. I'd get invited to go back to New York to be my brother's best man at his wedding.
Man, I was like nine months sober. What an incredible experience for me to be able to do that. And the last wedding I was at before that was my sister's, and I think that I was probably getting ready to be thrown out of that wedding. And I remember my dad, brilliant, absolutely brilliant. He said to me at that wedding, hey, Mike, I put a case of beer in your car. I said, oh, good. Would you mind if I left?
He said, nah, don't worry about saying goodbye to anybody. I'll let them know that you had something to do. Had he told me that he wanted me to leave, there would have been a fight, you know. Brilliant. I figured that out when I was about ten years sober. No one ever accused me of being the brightest bulb on the porch. Well, I'm going to the meetings. I'm reading the book. They're giving me assignments.
Stand at the door and greet people. Well, all right. I'm beginning to feel a little bit better, but I don't want you to know it, because I still have that victim mentality. And one night down in the Brown Tower, one of the guys, a regular old-timer, he's standing there, he's got white hair, and he used to golf every day, and a big tan and this smile just plastered on his face. I just, ugh. And I said, AJ, how are you?
And he said, I'm fine. It just keeps getting better. I thought he was on pills. And I said, you really mean that? And he said, yes. And I left there, and I decided. I decided I wanted to be more like AJ. See, I was one of these people with this victim mentality that came in here, and I wanted to get even. I'll get even with those people that did this to me. I'll get even with them. And John got sick and tired of hearing me say I was going to get even with people, and finally he said, kid, why don't you try to get even with people that have been good to you?
That's what I've been doing the last 25 years, and I haven't even begun to scratch the surface to be good to the people, to give back some of the goodness that has been freely given to me by the men and women in Alcoholics Anonymous. But I would cheer up this whole room by leaving. I mean, that's how I was. I was Negative Nancy. Somebody licked all the red off my candy. Everything was a problem. And AJ says this, and I decide I'm going to start being happy.
I'm going to get into this deal, and I'm going to be happy. And this is going on, and I'm greeting people, and I'm looking them in the eye, and I am happy. I mean, it's happening. The miracle is happening. And this lady says, how are you doing? I said, I'm doing really good, and things are getting better. What do you think she said? Just wait until the pink cloud lifts. I went to Big John with tears in my eyes.
John, what's that? He said, don't worry about it, kid. You just keep doing what you're doing. And I want you to know, if you're sitting there tonight, I don't care if you're one day or 20, 30, 40 years. If you're having a good day, this program's a day at a time. And if you found a way to be happy today, enjoy your happiness. Enjoy your day, and share it with someone else, because that's what we do in this program.
We give of ourselves to others without expectation. We share that joy that we get, that we're able, the blessings that we're able to have in Alcoholics Anonymous. If there's anything in my talk that I think I skimp over, and that's what it's like now. And I probably should spend more time with that in my talk. But I get so caught up in what happened with John and Bill and the people that I was around, that I want to share that with you, because the history of Alcoholics Anonymous has become so important to me that I've spent the better part of the last 20 years studying it, because I love it, and I've been attracted to that.
And that library that Bill has, I now have in my home. I've got 3,500 reel-to-reel tapes in my living room. I married the greatest woman in the world. I will guarantee you that. And we have been together trying to get that library digitized so that it will be permanently archived and make it available to the next generation of AA and Al-Anon members.
[00:40:00]
So that's been our commitment of service, to do that. And I'm grateful. A lot of kids think I'm crazy, but I'm so grateful to do that, because today I get to spend my time with authors and people doing movies and people looking to do research on their projects, and they'll contact me and want some of the information that's in this library. And we've only just begun to get that thing taken care of, and I'm just blown away by the things that we're uncovering and the historical things that we're finding.
And it's just been a real thrill for me to do that. And that's part of the reason I think I stay a little bit into that what happened part. Yeah, what happened, not what it was like, but what happened. And one day I was in the library over at Bill's house, and Smitty was there, Dr. Bob's son. And Smitty was talking, and he said, did John and Bill ever tell you about the first guy my dad and Bill W. worked with?
Well, I had learned enough about AA history to be dangerous. So I'm like, oh, yeah, Bill D., AA number three, Akron City Hospital. He's an attorney. And Smitty's like, well, Mike, there was actually someone before Bill D. Hmm? He said, oh, yeah, there was a guy named Eddie. And he said Eddie was a bad drunk. And he said they moved Eddie into our house, and they were trying to sober him up, and Eddie'd escape.
He'd open the window, and he'd climb down the drain pipe, and he'd go get drunk. Bill and Dr. Bob would go round Eddie up and bring him back and try to get him sober and carry the message to him. And Eddie was kind of crazy, and Eddie was chasing Ann S., Dr. Bob's wife, around the house with a butcher knife. And Eddie had to be committed. And Smitty said, so you would think that the first guy that my dad and Bill tried to work with was a complete failure.
He said the story doesn't end there. He said 15 years later at my dad's funeral, a guy came up to me and said, do you know who I am? And he said, well, you're Eddie. And they shook hands, and Eddie said he'd been sober for two years and was a member of the Youngstown group. And I left that library that day with a profound spiritual experience, because what had happened to me listening to those words of the very first person that Dr. Bob and Bill tried to help had brought my alcoholism to life in a way I'd never seen it, because I realized right then and there that Alcoholics Anonymous wasn't built on success.
It was built on failure. It was guys like Eddie and guys like Mike that made Alcoholics Anonymous work. And for the first time I knew I belonged here, and I was home with my family. And I'm so grateful for that. It's another reason that I try to communicate a message of history, because I think it's important that we know some of that so that we don't forget it, because if we forget it, we may return to some of those things.
After a couple of years with John, I decided it was time to go off on my own. So I moved to Chandler, Arizona. And I was living with an AA guy that my dad knew and doing a construction job. I was a laborer for a construction company in August. I mean, it gets hot. I'm out by the pool one afternoon, and I joke around. I said I was just out there just kind of looking for some joy. And she dove in the water.
I dove in after her, and she introduced herself and told me her name was Joy, and she was a schoolteacher from Michigan. And she was there visiting her family, and she would only be there for a few days. And I told her I was an alcoholic and I had been sober for two years. And I probably gave her like 60 minutes of the last talk I had listened to or something, because that's all I knew. See, and that's what I shared with her.
I shared with her what you taught me, because that's what I knew. Before I came to Alcoholics' Town, I was a shell. I was empty. I was nothing. And then you guys started to build me up. Sometimes we hear things in AA. Remind me to go back to Joy. Sometimes we hear things in AA, like take the cotton out of your ears and stick it in your mouth. And I had never heard that. But here's what my sponsor used to do for me.
He'd say, kid, I'd like you to make breakfast for me today. And I'd cook him a couple of eggs. And I was not a cook. And he'd go around for the whole day bragging about the kid making him breakfast. about the kid making him breakfast. What he was doing is he was giving me little things I could do. Then he was recognizing them, and then he was praising me for them, and
[00:45:04]
he was lifting me up. He said one day, would you make me spaghetti and meatballs? And could you make the meatballs round? Well, I figured out if you put enough eggs and enough bread with some meat, they look like snowballs, but they'll stick. I got two weeks of compliments out of that. I mean, he went around, the kid's mother taught him how to cook. Again, he's lifting me up, making me feel good. He was beginning to do that, and I want to suggest that we try to do that with the men and the women that are just coming into the room and see how that works. Boy, it sure worked for me. I wanted to come to AA. I wanted to come because the people were giving me love. They were treating me nice. They were lifting me up. They were making me feel like I belonged. They were telling me, kid, you're doing a good job. Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't. I don't know, but boy, they sure were telling me that.
I remember getting my 30-day chip and my 60-day chip in six months and nine months and a year. My God, when I got a year, it was incredible. Before I walked out of the bedroom, I can hear John hanging up the phone from telling my mom and dad, the kid got a year. He was so proud of that year. Later that day, they had a parade. It was incredible. What I'm talking about, though, is he rebuilt the man. He rebuilt the man. He lifted me up. Gave me something to think about. He gave me something to pass on to others. Joy. All right, so we're in the pool. I get back, you know. We're in the pool and I ask her out on a date and she's very polite and she says no. She just didn't have time. Well, you know, instinctively, I want to feel rejected, but you folks have taught me that that's not something that I should do. You taught me that I should go to a meeting and work with another alcoholic.
And that night, that's where I was. And I saw her a couple days later at the swimming pool and she said, hey, my plans have changed. And my dad keeps score for the baseball team here and I've got an extra ticket if you'd like to go to a baseball game. And I'm like, sure, that'd be great as long as you, you know, will join me for dinner. And she said yes. So I pick her up in my black Ford Fairmont with no air conditioning to take her to sit outside at a baseball game in August. She gets her fortune cookie and she opens it and the message in it is you can trust the man you're with. His love is true. Four months later, we were married. This December, it'll be 23 years. My relationship with Joy is better today than it has ever been. And it's only because of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I have three beautiful children and my relationship with my children is absolutely wonderful. I have two in college and one in high school. And we get to deal with the things that everybody gets to deal with in life. And we've been through the deaths and we've been through all of the things we go through and we've been through them sober. And the only thing I can tell you about relationships before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I can sum up in one word as far as relationships in my life. And that would be with employers or school or any of it. With girlfriends or I don't know if you could really call any of my relationships girlfriends. I mean, they last like a day. But anyway, to sum it all up, one word instead of giving you a fifth step, pathetic. And it's like I often think that we should try to get some of our stuff down to one word descriptions because everybody in here can identify with that. I had absolutely no concept of how to have a relationship.
And then I'm reading the book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And it says lack of power is our dilemma. I thought drinking was my problem. No wonder every time I stopped drinking I got sicker. It wasn't the drinking. It was something much greater than the drinking. Then it said the main object of this book is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself. It will solve your problem. Boy, did I have some work to do. Because I didn't know how to have a relationship with God. I had no idea. And I began just like I began with Alcoholics Anonymous. Simple little daily steps. I'd get down on my knees because this
[00:50:05]
head of mine would want a drink. So I'd get down on my knees and the only prayer I could say was God help me get through this day without thinking about taking a drink. And that was that. Then I went on and did my business. I went to the meetings. I hung out with John and we did our thing. And I'm grateful. And eventually I was getting ready for bed one morning. I say morning because John would keep me up all night. And I realized I'd gone through the whole day and I never thought of taking a drink. I realized that God was doing for me what I couldn't do for myself. See our promises says we'll be amazed before we're halfway through that we're going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. I was beginning to experience these promises. I was beginning to get to the point where I wasn't regretting my past and I wasn't wanting to shut the door on it. I was able to go back there and be the best man at my brother's wedding. I was able to start to participate in life. I was able to experience the things that you folks have been experiencing telling me that I could experience. They were starting to happen for me. And I could see it come into life. And then I wanted to know more. So I continued to do this. And they told me that we practice these principles in all of our affairs. There was an important for me to take that I was an undisciplined person. It was important for me to begin to have some disciplines in my life. And those meant daily activities that would help me understand how to live by these principles and enlarge my spiritual condition. And it was important for me to try to give away what was freely given to me. And I began to do that. And I began to do it on a day at a time basis. And I began to realize that great things will happen for those of us who don't care who get the credit. I was in Toronto at the International five years ago. And I met this group of people from another country. And I was talking with this lady. And I could tell that she wasn't real healthy. But I knew she had been sober for a number of years because she had told me that. And anyway, we're breaking up to go to dinner. And I had a picture of Bill W. in my bedroom. And I ran up to get that picture because I wanted to give it to the lady. I didn't tell her what I was doing.
I came down and she was gone. Well, I saw one of the people from her party. And I said, listen, when you see that lady I was talking to, would you please give this to her? And he said, yeah, she'll love it. And that's great. And I went on about my business. Well, the next morning I'm trying to check out of the hotel. And this lady comes up and she's grabbing at me. And she says, you'll never know. I need to talk to you. You'll never know. And she's just crying. And she's hysterical. And I said, relax. And I finally got her to sit down. And I went over and I sat with her. And she looked at me and she said, Mike, you'll never know what you did. And I said, what did I do? And she said, I was in the lobby of the hotel yesterday contemplating taking a drink. And she said, this picture appeared.
And in my mind's eye, I was able to remember Bill W. standing in the lobby of the hotel thinking about taking a drink. And because of your picture, I didn't have to. And I looked at her and I said, let me tell you something. I gave you a picture, but God gave you a miracle. Hang on to that. I didn't do that. But every now and then, God lets me see this. See, every now and then it's revealed. And when it is, my life is so abundant. It's so blessed. You know, I told you that I was a loser and I was a disappointment. And that's how I was.
And a few years ago, I was actually in this town and I met with someone and we talked about the idea of maybe writing a book. And in my head, I, you know, I've done some things in sales and stuff like that, but write a book. And I and anyway, he called me a while later and he said, are you still interested in doing that? And I said, yeah. And we talked about it. And then he said, would you mind if I talk to the publisher about it? I'm like, well, no, that'd be all right. Then he calls me up and he says, the publisher wants to go ahead and do it. Would you mind me having my attorney negotiate the terms? No, no. Go ahead. A little while later, I get a contract in the mail. I signed the contract. I sent it in and I get a check. I hadn't written a word. Tell me A.A. isn't good. Now, I'd love to stand here tonight and tell you that I was overwhelmed knowing my life is divine order unfolding into goodness and everything is great. And I just met that with as much faith as you could. But I didn't. See, what happened to me was I was afraid. See, I had fear, all kinds of fear. I couldn't do it. I won't measure up. How am I going to do it?
This guy's a professional. They won't like it. And I began to have some people look at some of the work that I was doing and give it back. And everybody praised it. Just like you folks do on A.A. They said, that's a great story. You're doing a great job. The book will be out next week. And I'm grateful for that. And I'm not sharing that to plug the book. I'm sharing that to plug Alcoholics Anonymous. To let you know that if you're
[00:55:02]
sitting there tonight and you're wondering, what can I do? Or I've got a dream inside me and I want to do something. I hope I'm kicking the meaning off in a good way. And you know, in the back of the doctor's opinion, it says that these people were becoming sold on the ideas contained in the book. And I hope maybe I sound like a bit of a salesman. Because I think that's important. I don't think you would like it very much if I got up here and said, well, I don't know. You know, if people weren't kicking me off all the time, my life would probably be better. Come on. That's not what Alcoholics Anonymous gave me. It gave me a life I couldn't even imagine. And they told me that. They said, kids, you're going to have a life you can't even comprehend. I never thought a kid like me would get married and have kids and sponsor people. That's another thing. You know, people ask me to sponsor them. People call me up for advice. I'm on the board at my church.
Do they not know who I am? Howard said to me not long ago, how many men do you sponsor, Mike? I said about half of them. Well, I don't know how long I've been talking, but I think it's getting time to wrap it up. You know, Dr. Bob, in his last talk, said that if you simmered Alcoholics Anonymous down to just two things, you'd have love and service. And I said to John, tell me about this love business.
And he said, Mike, a definition I like to give you for love is love is an unbiased attitude of goodwill toward everyone. I said, what does that mean? He said, oh, that just means you don't wish that guy get hit by a car. I can love that way. What he did, and I thank God, what he did was he brought the bar down to where I was. He didn't make me come up to where he was. And isn't that what we do in Alcoholics Anonymous? Don't we go down to where that newcomer is and meet them where they are instead of making them come up to where we think we are? Isn't that how it works? One alcoholic talking to another alcoholic, giving that hand of kindness and consideration and love that was freely extended to each one of us.
And then he said, service. And that's that giving of ourselves to another without expectation. I've had the privilege of listening to thousands of hours of those recordings, and they have really enlarged my life. And I'm so grateful. I am so grateful for that. I think that the CDs that you can pick up, even if you don't like the talks, pick the CDs up and give them to someone else and let them benefit from them because it's such an important service. And thank you for doing your job and what you have been called to do, James.
One of my sponsor's sponsors, Dick, John's sponsor, I was telling somebody because Dick got sober in Washington in 1941. And he closed one of his talks by saying that a bell is not a bell until we ring it. And a song is not a song until we sing it. And love wasn't put in our hearts to stay. Love is only love when we give it away. And to me tonight, Alcoholics Anonymous is only AA if we give it away. Thank you and God bless you.