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Source: Paul M – Steel City Woodstock (2024) – Speaker Talk – Date Unknown.mp3 File: paul-m-steel-city-woodstock-2024-speaker-talk-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:09:37
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Thank you Rob. My name is Paul. I'm an alcoholic. The committee left a little note here. Paul, it's been a wonderful weekend so far. Try not to screw it up. Well, thank you very much for that there. I'll just put this down here. It's good to be sober. I want to thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to do service here tonight. It's a great privilege and honor to be asked to speak here and one I don't take lightly. I want to thank Rob for being such a wonderful host and picking me up at the airport and we've been just connecting all along. I don't know about you guys, but what a great weekend this has been so far, you know. I mean, the energy in this room, it's like palpable, you know. That's wonderful because energy is like electricity. It flows from positive to negative, not the other way around. So you people have really, don't worry, I'm not going to start singing, You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings, but you really have lifted me up here this weekend and it's been incredible, all the speakers. I mean, really, if I didn't get something out of this weekend, it's because I didn't bring anything to put it in, you know. And I'm glad that it was open here to hear messages from people I've heard many times before, but hearing them in a different way. And I just had a wonderful time since I got here. It's been incredible and what a beautiful hotel. I mean, my room, oh my God, it's so nice. The towels in my room are so big and soft and fluffy. I can't tell you the trouble I had getting them into my suitcase, you know. I had to push down to get them all in there, you know. And I'm coming to you from Rockaway Beach, New York City. I don't know if you know Rockaway Beach, it's a big Irish-American neighborhood and people go, oh, Rockaway Beach, the Irish Riviera.
We know it better as Cirrhosis by the Sea. There's two types of people in Rockaway Beach, those that are in AA and those that should be in AA, you know. If you're looking for 12-step work, come to Rockaway Beach, you know. And I know we've got some new people here tonight. I want to welcome you to Alcoholics Anonymous. And let me get a kick out of this. There's a guy with 90 days sober and he's standing outside the meeting and the sponsor says to him, I just think where you were just 90 days ago. And the sponsor says, well, actually I was sitting in a hot tub, half drunk, surrounded by beautiful women in bikinis. And the sponsor says, isn't it wonderful they don't have to live out anymore today, you know. You're thinking, is this it, you know. And I know we've got some new people here tonight. You see those things, 10 questions if you're an alcoholic, 20 questions if you're an alcoholic.
Maybe this will sum it up for you if you're on the fence. There's a guy and he's 25 years sober and he's out on a blind date with this normal drinker. And she's having a glass of wine and he's having a glass of water. And about halfway through dinner she says, I notice you don't drink. He says, no, I don't drink. She goes, you don't drink at all? He says, no. She goes, not even one drop? He says, not even one drop. She said, what would happen if you took a drink of my wine? And he sat back and he says, well, just imagine you wake up tomorrow morning and your car's gone, your money's gone, your credit cards are gone, your phone is gone. She says, that would happen to you if you took one drink? He says, no, it would happen to you if I took one drink. And if you think that's funny, you're probably an alcoholic. And if you don't think it's funny, I recommend the Worldwide Fellowship of Al-Anon. I'm just joking, I'm just joking. I love Al-Anon. And I called my sponsor earlier on before I came down here. Cliff and Ralph and I share the same sponsor. And this is the truth. He says, tell Cliff and tell Ralph that I love them. He didn't say anything to me. He just says, tell Ralph and Cliff I love them, you know? And he says to me, where are you actually? I said, I'm in Pittsburgh. He said, oh, you went all the way to Pittsburgh to talk? How far would you go to listen? But I told him I loved him, which is growth for me in AA. Before I came to AA, I was a bit like the Irishman who loved his wife so much he almost told her, you know? So I'm growing in Alcoholics Anonymous. Anyway, if you're
[00:05:03]
new here tonight, I want to welcome you. I want to welcome you to Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not here to sell AA. This is attraction, not promotion. But I will tell you this, I don't mean cash and prizes. You cannot get where I'm standing here tonight from where I came from without Alcoholics Anonymous. It's an impossible journey. Now why do I continue to come to AA? I know how the movie goes, but I wouldn't miss it to see someone walking in that door on the worst night of their life and be given the grace not to drink. And AA is so much more than grace. It's mercy. And the definition of mercy I like the best is entering into the chaos of another person's life. And back in August of 1992, the few people left in my life was going that way. The only people coming this way was Alcoholics Anonymous. And they carried this message. My message might even keep me sober. They carried this message. And we've heard it here all weekend. What is the message of Alcoholics Anonymous? When complete defeat through alcohol. I have a body that won't let me drink and a mind that won't let me stop. One drink creates a thirst I can't quench. When I control my drinking, I don't enjoy it. And when I start to enjoy my drinking, I can't control it.
With your help, and I say this is a testament to AA, not myself. With your help, I haven't had a drink since August of 1992. One drink tonight, not five, not ten. One drink tonight, destination unknown. And that's what showed up here in AA. And these beautiful people with this beautiful program brought me from a place of powerlessness and unmanageability through this program where I'm sitting safe and protected, 12 steps away from a drink here tonight. And if you're new here tonight, don't think that you've got nothing to offer AA. AA will meet you exactly where you are. Drop an anchor where you are tonight and AA will meet you exactly where you are. I love that we are a fellowship of equals. Our fellowship, I love the fact that it's horizontal, it's not vertical. It's egalitarian, not a hierarchy.
I mean, if you stay in AA a while, you'll get longevity, but not seniority. If I think I'm better than somebody else because I'm here a few 24s, shame on me. We're a fellowship of equals, and everyone in here has worth and value. I mean, it is the only place I know in the world where the whole, it is greater than the sum of the parts, and we all come in here one day a month, three months, six months. Ernie Gertz talks about the AA campfire, and we sit here around the AA campfire. My sponsor uses that analogy all the time. There was a line I misquoted for years in AA. I would have said, how it was, what happened, and how it is today. It doesn't say that. It says how we were, what happened, and how we are today. And there's such power in that. We sit around the AA campfire, and we tell our stories. I mean, I hope you don't hear it down here, but once in a while you'd hear it up in New York. You'd hear people say, oh, I don't want to go into a drunken log.
I don't want to go into the crash-bang wallop. I don't understand that. All we have here is our stories, our collective stories. I mean, and there's something in that. When someone comes into a meeting of AA, and they say to that newcomer, I used to live like this, but because of Alcoholics Anonymous, I now live like this. There's power in that, that transformative thing that takes place here in AA. And our fellowship, you know, if you're new here tonight, I'm a great believer that AA without the new person, it's just a room full of noise. It makes no sense to me. The whole program and fellowship is predicated on helping the next alcoholic. Bill Wilson, and I'm a bit of an AA nerd,
[00:10:00]
and I live in New York City, and I'll go in there on December 11th, drag a couple of sponsees with me, and we'll go up to where Towns Hospital used to be, where Bill Wilson got sober. And I don't know what happened in that room that night on December 11th of 1934, but something happened. There's life before that moment, and then there's life after that moment. And Bill Wilson laying in that bed, and they talk about divine inspiration. I believe that means you're given access to information you shouldn't really have. And Bill Wilson laying in that hospital bed, and he thought to himself, surely there must be other people out there like me.
That wouldn't have been my first thought. I'm going to pull the gangplank up. I'm on board. And he thought of others. He was other-centered from the beginning. And Adam Mench, it says in the doctor's opinion, he asked to speak with the other patients. We didn't have steps. We didn't have traditions. We didn't have literature, but we had each other. And Bill Wilson, the steps hadn't been written, but he was trying to practice the principles of the 12th step. If Bill Wilson had waited until he was sober a year before he helped somebody else, we'd all be dead today.
And he tried to practice that principle of the 12th step from the very beginning, and that's so true in my life tonight. If I'm not trying to practice the principle of the 12th step of AA, then what am I doing here? I'm working an 11-step program. You know what an 11-step program is for a guy like me? It's nothing more than a self-help program. It's a highly evolved self-help program, but it's all about me. You've heard all weekend, that 12th step completes that spiritual circuit.
So if you're new here tonight, come all the way in. Get right into the middle of AA. There's a line in the big book in chapter four, and it talks about the ancient theory of the flat earth. I'm a great believer that the AA world is a flat earth. If you go to the age of AA, you're going off. And the thing about going to the age of Alcoholics Anonymous, it's a drift. It's almost a glacial drift, and you don't raise your going until you're gone. And by the time you get to the age of Alcoholics Anonymous, if there's any signposts, they're in a language you don't speak anymore, and a language you don't understand anymore. Because we speak a certain language in AA.
We speak the language of the heart. My alcoholism, if I'm on the age of AA, it speaks a different language. My alcoholism works from the neck up. My alcoholism doesn't want me here with you. My alcoholism wants me detached, afraid, alone. In fact, my disease wants me talking to me about me. That's a conversation I can't have. And I think this whole weekend, we've seen that this whole this whole weekend, we've seen that this whole program, fellowship, steps, traditions, are designed for what? See, I think this is where the big show is going on. Lights, camera action.
This whole program is designed to drag me sometimes kicking and screaming down out of here, into here, where the real show is going on. I hope tonight I don't talk to an alcoholic. I hope I don't talk at an alcoholic. I hope and pray I never get up in the spiritual hilltop and talk down to an alcoholic. What is AA? This weekend has proved it. It's one alcoholic talking with another alcoholic to remove feelings of differentness and separateness and uniqueness.
I am you and you are me. I was very friendly with Liz B, and I'm sure that somebody knows her. Liz was the first African-American woman to get sober in AA. She got sober in July of 1952. She died last year, 100 years old, and she was a month shy of 70 years sober. She spoke at Bill Wilson's 28th anniversary. And Liz would always say when she was sharing, Always say when she was sharing, without you there's no me. So simple, but so deeply profound.
[00:15:06]
If I'm doing AA alone, I'm not doing AA. There's a friend of mine who says it's BB. I said, what's BB? He said, I don't know, but it's not AA, you know. Thank God I realized tonight, and I hope I don't forget tomorrow, that there's one lifeboat. There's not a selection of lifeboats, there's one lifeboat, and it's called AA. And it's none of my business who's sitting next to me in that lifeboat. It is my business, if I'm willing to help that person, or be helped by that person, that I'm responsible. And what do we do here? We don't sail off into the sunset. We circle around, getting more survivors, putting them into the boat, putting a blanket over their shoulders, giving them comfort, and telling them about our way of life. Now, why am I an alcoholic? I have no idea.
Was I born an alcoholic? Did I become an alcoholic? Was I a symptom looking for a disease? Was it nature? Was it nurture? I don't know. What's the old joke in AA? What came first, the chicken or the keg? A lot of guys like a drunk trying to figure that one out. I just accept the fact tonight. In fact, everything I need to know, I probably found out in my first 30 days in AA. I mean, AA's a funny place. They don't tell you a hundred different things one time.
They tell you three or four things a hundred times over. And I got to hear it over and over. Ralph talked about it. Hear the different voices. Same song sheet. And I got to hear it. I learned two plus two is four once in my life. Never had to learn it again. The fact that my life's unmanageable, drunk or sober, that's a lesson I have to learn over and over and over again. So everything in that first month I found out that my name is Paul and I'm an alcoholic. But that tells me who I am.
It tells me what I am. It tells me where I am. And it tells me what I need to be doing here in AA. Thank God the old timers didn't tell me when I got here, oh Paul, your life's going to get better. They didn't tell me that. It says, Paul, if you make the central fact of your life that your name is Paul and you're an alcoholic, things around you may not get okay, but you will be okay. And that's what I want to say to anybody tonight. If you're sitting out there tonight saying, Paul, I've heard you guys all weekend. You look like you got your lives together. You don't know where I'm coming from. I understand that. You hear that analogy, you go 10 miles into the forest, you got to go 10 miles out. I don't believe that in AA. I don't care how deep and how dark and how painful the force you're in tonight is. AA tells me and I will tell you, you're just 12 steps away from a brand new life. Just 12 steps away. You hear people say, oh, I came to AA and I got my life back.
I don't want my life back. It sucked. I had it for 30 years. I got a whole new life in AA. Are there people from the drinking days? Yes, but our relationships are different today. I love that classic line in Days of Wine and Roses and Jack Lemmon says, we were lost in a sea of booze and if there was any coordinates, it was pain and misery. And every once in a while, I wash up on dry land. You know where alcoholics are, we're great starters, get things going again. But everything's always built on sand and the first drink would always come back and I'm washed out to sea with more debris. Because of Alcoholics Anonymous, even though there's days out there of spiritual warfare, my world today is built on spiritual concrete. And no matter what happens, it was said here today, I don't have to drink no matter what. Ralph said that. I used to be a guy that had to drink no matter what. And you're my people. I have never been in this room before in my life. But all weekend, my head's going up and down. You're my people. James Joyce, the Irish writer, he's got a great line from one of his books and he's talking about Dublin. But it's so indicative of AA, he says,
[00:20:00]
here comes everybody. Look around, we're all here. Gender, colour, creed, doesn't matter. When you tell me you're an alcoholic, I know enough. If I want to know about my next door neighbour, I might have to ask him, you know, what do you do for a living? Are you a Yankee fan or a med fan? You tell me you're an alcoholic. I know you've experienced terror, frustration, bewilderment, despair. I know you put a drink to your lips as the tears are rolling down your face and you drank it anyway. I know that friends and family and loved ones, sometimes in my case, on bended knee, begged me not to drink. And for goodness sake, at the end of my drinking, drinking against my own will. I know that because I'm an alcoholic and I know that about you because you're an alcoholic. And there's far more that unites us than ever divides us. And the unity, you know, the steps, you know, maybe if you're new here tonight, all the steps and traditions.
We have a symbol in AA. It's a triangle inside a circle and there's three parts to it. Unity, service and recovery. I believe from your first meeting, you can put all three parts of that triangle into your life. Unity. We do together what I can't do alone. Many meetings make it easy. Few make it hard. None make it impossible. I need you and you need me. And that's okay by me. Service. Sandy's name was mentioned this weekend. Sandy used to say, the highest pay grade in AA is servant. They told me when I first got here, if you put away one more chair than the one you sat on, you're doing service in AA.
Recovery. Maybe the 12 steps, if you're new tonight, seem like a foreign concept. We have slogans in AA. Easy does it. Live and let live. One day at a time. They were like the banisters to the steps. As I put my foot in step one, those slogans kept me steady. Now I'm here to tell you from personal experience, not in the theoretical, you can stay dry on two parts of the triangle. I've done it. You could even stay dry on one part of the triangle. I've done that too. But if I want to get free from the one person I could never get free from, which is me, and live in the one place I've never lived, right here, right now, I've got to put all three parts into my life. I've got to do it every day. But what a small price to pay for the life that AA has given me. We were talking earlier on there, Bob's from Las Vegas, and I've been to Las Vegas a couple of times, and I don't gamble, but I like to watch, you know. And you see those guys like in Caesars Palace, and they're playing like high stakes Texas Hold'em, and you'll see the guy get up and he'll get all his chips and he'll say, I'm all in. What a great metaphor for alcoholics and all this. I've got to be all in.
Because I'll tell you what, my alcoholism is all in, every day, always trying to move me away from the centre. So why I'm an alcoholic, I've heard people tell their stories from the podium. Some people were successful in their lives, some people had a modicum of success, that's not my story. I came out of the start, I know this may come as a shock to some people here tonight, but I'm not from the neighbourhood originally.
It's over 35 years now since I left my native Cuba, and I'm from Belfast in Northern Ireland, and the sort of neighbourhood I came from, if you didn't drink you moved. Everybody drank. And I think to myself, it was mentioned this weekend, most people, the normal drinkers, drink for conviviality. They drink because what alcohol does to them. I drink because what alcohol does for me. Alcohol does something for me that it doesn't do for the normal or even the heavy drinker.
One drink immediately changes how I feel about me, you and this. And that's why I'm going to come back for more. There was consequences, what does it say in the big book, we like to drink with impunity, without punishment. I would like to be a consequence-free drinker, but I'm not.
[00:25:07]
There was consequences to my drinking from day one. In fact, I remember a guy saying to me one time, wailing to my drinking, he says, do you want to stop drinking or do you just want the consequences of your drinking to stop? I didn't like that question. I want to be a consequence-free drinker, but I'm an alcoholic. And I was alcoholic from the first drink. I love that movie, because it's such an allegory for life. You've got the ghost of the past, the ghost of the present, and the ghost of the future. When I was taking that first drink at 14 or 15 years of age, up a back street in Northern Ireland, as I was putting that drink to my lips, if the ghost of my alcoholic future had tapped me on the shoulder and said, I want to show you something, look in that window. You see that guy drinking around the clock against his own will?
You see that guy that's pushed away everybody who mattered in his life? You see that guy who's got quicksand stretched around him in all directions? That will be you in 15 years. I'd have said, you're out of your mind. You must be thinking of somebody else. I wouldn't allow another person to come close to doing to me what I allowed alcohol to do to me. I mean, I only ever had one bar room fight, actually, and it was a draw. Although most people watching said that she won, you know, and I wouldn't allow alcohol. I mean, what does the price of our alcoholism ask us to pay? It's incredible. The price that this disease demands. I mean, here's a funny place.
Alcohol demanded that I give up everything for one thing. ASA says, just give up one thing and you'll get everything. Those paradoxes in alcoholics and almas. I took that first drink. Within six months, I'm getting my stomach pumped out in the local hospital on a school night, and they told my parents, it's a good job you brought him here. He probably would have died of alcoholic poisoning, and it got worse, and it got worse, and it got worse. But the good news, if you're here tonight, sobriety is progressive as well. And I'm not going to stand up here like some snake oil salesman. There's things I lost through drinking, and they didn't come back.
There's things you might have lost through drinking, and they might not come back. Thank God for our 12 steps. Who among us could live with the guilt and the shame and remorse of our drinking if it wasn't for the 12 steps to alleviate that? I wasn't a sociopath. I knew the bridges I burned, the doors I slammed, and the people I walked away from. I can't change my past, but because of the 12 steps of AA, I was able to come to terms with my past. And that's why if you're new here tonight, we don't do the steps because they're nice. We do them because they're necessary for recovery. If I want to get physically and mentally and spiritually rehabilitated, I have to work this program. I've tried every other way of getting the vital spiritual experience without doing the program. Some symbolic victories, but nothing of any permanence.
So my life's falling apart very quickly in Northern Ireland, but I don't know if you know Northern Ireland history. I grew up during the Troubles. We had this low-level civil war going on. So I was working class Catholic from the wrong side of the tracks. Big chip on my shoulder. In fact, when I got to AA, a guy says to me, you know something, you're a well-balanced guy. I said, finally somebody that knows what's going on around here. He says, yes, you've got a chip on both shoulders, you know. Hated everything, hated everybody, can always find the needle in the haystack. So my life's falling apart in Northern Ireland, Catholic Troubles, can't get a break.
See, I'm the sort of a guy, I'm always into finger-pointing. I'm always into the blame game. I'm always into the blame game. I'm always looking for an outside fix for what's an inside job.
[00:30:01]
I'm blaming Northern Ireland. I mean, it's no coincidence I'm standing in America with an Irish accent. I was a runner, a long-distance runner. Always looking for… But you know what I found out in AA? Every time I ran away from life, I was the guy firing the starting pistol. And that outside fix… Isn't it funny in AA to tell you it's an inside job? When I started working with used people, and what was really important, a spiritual basis for living, the outside started falling into place.
So my life's falling apart, and I came home to my father one night. We were alcoholics. We were so dramatic. I said to my dad, I said, Dad, sit down, I got some bad news for you. He said, what is it? I said, I'm going to America, and don't try and talk me out of it. He says, talk you out of it, I'll help you pack. On you go, Columbus. Turn left at Greenland. I know we've got some new people here tonight that mightn't realize that Columbus actually was an alcoholic.
It's a very little known fact. When you think about it, he must have been an alcoholic. When he set off, he didn't know where he was going. When he got there, he didn't know where he was. When he got back, he didn't know where he had been. And he got a woman to pay for the trip, not once, but twice. You know he might have been an alcoholic. So I packed my bags, and like driftwood, I washed up in Rockaway Beach.
And to make matters worse, I got a job as a bartender. Now I'm here, I hold the distinct title in Rockaway Beach of being the worst bartender in the worst bar in Rockaway Beach. I mean, I worked in a bar. We had a bouncer on the door, but he was there to throw people into the bar. You know the sort of a bar, if you want to see a full set of teeth, you need 32 customers. I'm looking at all these beautiful women here tonight. Ladies night in this bar.
The women that come into this bar, they look like they put their makeup on when they were jumping up and down on a trampoline. Like over here, back over here. But water found its own level, and so do alcoholics, and I fit it in like a glove. I used to work from 6 at night to 4 in the morning. I mean, it's pretty pathetic, actually. I worked in a job where I could walk behind the bar at 6 o'clock at night, pour myself a drink, and put it in the speed rack.
At the end of my drinking, I couldn't even get to that job. Fears, phobias, hang-ups, couldn't ride elevators. Forget about the New York City subway. What's the old saying in AA? Booze give me the wings to fly. And then it took away the sky. The rebellious creditor. In the merchant of Venice, Shylock just wanted one pound of flesh, right? Not this disease. It'll take my job, it'll take my car, it'll take my wife, it'll take my kids, it'll take the shirt off my back.
But what it really wants is me 6 feet under. There's a lot of terminal diseases out there. I'm not familiar with those, but I'm familiar with this one. This disease, alcoholism, will kill me stone dead, with or without a drink in my body. I don't need booze in my body to destroy my life. I almost done it in AA because I wouldn't accept these spiritual principles that have been discussed here all weekend.
So, I almost went to the graveyard thinking that I had a drinking problem. Our book talks about it. A drinking problem is solved by not drinking. And our book gives a couple of examples. A medical reason, a romantic reason, a change of environment. And those people can stop or even moderate. But then it talks about us. But what about the real alcoholic? I'll give you one vignette. My 20s behind that bar, by the time I'm 25, I hit my first hospital.
By the time I'm 27, I'm trying to stop drinking. I can stop drinking, but I can't stay stopped. You know what AA has given me that I can never repay them enough for? AA has given me something between me and the first drink.
[00:35:02]
Before I came to AA and I would try to stop drinking, the thought of a drink would eventually become an obsession to drink. What's an obsession? An idea that crowds out all other ideas and I find myself drinking. Up in this moment in time tonight, in single-handed combat, I have never beaten an obsession to drink. It's like getting into the ring with a heavyweight champion. A child could say, don't get in the ring.
But don't get in the ring means don't take the first drink. And I don't know how not to take the first drink. So I keep getting back in the ring. Perhaps you can identify, and I tell myself, the epitaph of the alcoholic. It'll be different this time. I'm going to watch it. The minute it gets under control, I'm going to pull it right back in again. But like Dr. Silkworth says, one drink and I'm off on the well-known spree.
That's what differentiates me from a normal or a heavy drinker. You know why I'm an alcoholic? I'll tell you why. I can't tell you when I'm going to drink again. And once I drink, I can't tell you when I'm going to stop. That's what separates me from normal or even heavy drinkers. It's been said here all weekend, alcohol is my salute. I'll give you one vignette that sums this up. I'm 27, and I'm on this drunk, at this stage of my drinking, a ballroom drink is a memory.
I lock myself in the apartment, I close the blinds, and I go at it round the clock. And here's the recipe for unhappiness. Lock yourself in the apartment, close the blinds, and play the saddest blues music. I like to listen to stuff like the great Warren Zevon, If You Won't Leave Me, I'll Find Somebody That Will. Sort of songs alcoholics like to listen to. Or the Al-Anon version of that song, If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too?
I'm just joking, I'm just joking. So I'm in this apartment, and there's no more good times. I'm drinking for unconscious time. And I run out of drink, but I'm a bartender in Rockaway, I always know where to get drink in the middle of the night. And I go down to this bar, and I knock on the side door, and the guy lets me in, and puts a bottle of Dewars up on the counter, and a few beers, and I collapsed in the bar, in an alcoholic seizure.
And I woke up in the local hospital, which I'd been in before, and I was convulsing so bad, that they put me in a restraining sheet, and jacked me up full of Librium, to get me off the ceiling. And there was a woman standing on the bedside, with this on-again, off-again relationship, and I took her hand, and I wasn't trying to be cinematic, but I took her hand, and I said to her, I can't drink. It's obvious I can't drink.
And I will never, ever drink again. That's it. I'm done. It's over. What is Bill Wilson saying in his story? Self-knowledge? Surely that's the answer. No, it's not. Knowing I'm an alcoholic will not keep me sober. If this is a one-step program, I'm a dead man walking, because I always drink again. I love in AA, that our program is so solution-based. The first step states the problem, and immediately, it's 11 steps of solution.
I'm standing here tonight, I don't know about tomorrow, but I'm standing here tonight, and people are saying, oh, you're just an arm's length away from a drink. I suppose technically that's true. But right here tonight, because of AA, I'm 12 steps away from a drink. And that's a long way from when I first came into AA. But don't get me wrong, I don't think they're 12 steps up to anything. They're 12 steps down to humility.
I've seen people drink again in AA that I thought would never drink again. And it could be me. We get a daily reprieve, not a lifetime pardon. The day that I wake up and think I'm staying sober is the day I'm getting ready to get drunk again. I left that hospital.
[00:40:00]
If you'd have put me in a lie-detecting machine in the lobby, I would have passed with flying colours, because I meant it. Out of visceral, I'm done, it's over. I really didn't know what the problem was, Step 1. I didn't know what the solution was, Step 12. And I hadn't got used good people to bring me between the two. It was me against the first drink, one more time. And I'll give you… I don't have a drinking…
See, I almost went to the graveyard thinking I had a drinking problem. I have alcoholism. And how do I know that? One week away from drink and I get this stone in my shoe. I don't know where it comes from, but it's there all the time. Two weeks go by, I get this knot in my stomach. Three weeks go by, and I got three weeks. The top button of my shirt feels tight all the time. A month goes by and I got a month.
I'm talking through gritted teeth. I've got a couple of eggs in the back of my neck. Now, you put me in any machine in the world after 30 days and you will not find a trace of alcohol in my body. I submit to you, that's not a drinking problem, that's a living sober problem. And that's why I need 12 steps, 12 traditions, unity, service, recovery, to live out there under God's will rather than my demands.
I drank again, and that woman said what non-alcoholics say, I've got to get away from you. And I say, I don't need you, I don't need anybody. And I drank for two and a half more years after that. Bottoms to bottoms. But I love when someone's telling their story and it goes down and it goes down and then they say what I believe in an AA qualification, and then. There's not a person in here tonight who's got one day or more that hasn't had an and then moment.
When I hear an alcoholic say, and then, I sit up because I know the higher power is coming in the next sentence. And this is my and then moment. Blinds closed, going at it around the clock again. And I catch my reflection in the mirror and I think to myself, what the hell happened to me? What happened to that 15 year old kid that wanted to be the next soccer star? I'm drinking for unconscious time and a piece of paper came under my door.
And I picked up this piece of paper and it had a man's telephone number on it. Now it's strange enough, a piece of paper coming under your door. The stranger thing is, I called the number. Because I'm Irish, I'm stoic, I'm a wall builder. But the thing about building walls, and I built the wall one brick at a time. But the thing about building a wall, I'm not getting in. You're not getting in, but I'm not getting out.
I'm in a prison of my own making. And I called this number, which is so alien to my personality. And this woman from Al-Anon, great woman, answered the phone, Kitty. Her husband, who was a member of AA. Jerry, I think it's that Irish guy on the phone. And I heard him coming to the phone and he asked me where I was and I told him where I lived. And he said, me and another man is coming to your apartment.
And these two men came to my apartment. Just two regular guys. One guy was a subway conductor, and the other guy was a commercial removal scam Manhattan. But like our book says, they were armed with the facts about themselves. Now I thought they were going to come to my apartment and talk about my drinking. Because back in August of 92, the few people left in my life, that's what they wanted to talk about.
Perhaps you've had these conversations. Do you know what you did last? And I'd stand there, nodding my head. And as they're talking to me, I'm thinking to myself, I wish they would go away. It makes perfect sense to me now, that God, in his infinite wisdom, would use alcoholics
[00:45:04]
to get alcoholics sober. Because I listen to nobody, since I was a kid, family, friends, girlfriends, soccer coaches, in one ear and out the other ear. But I'll listen with you, because you are my people. Our most prized possession in AA is identification. If we lose that, forget about it. Because when you talk about you, I find out about me. And these two men came to my apartment, and they came in the door, and they sat down, just like that man on the bed picture, and they didn't talk about my drinking.
They talked about their drinking, and they told story after story of their drinking. And then the magic, I shouldn't say magic, because that sounds like a trick, the mystery happened. I told these two men, within 20 minutes, something I hadn't even told myself. I coughed up the big furball, and I said to these men, I can't stop drinking. I can't stop drinking. The last time I got out of a hospital, I was drinking the same day as I got out of the hospital.
What's wrong with me? And the guy put his arm around me, and he said one of the most beautiful words a suffering alcoholic can hear, under those conditions. He said, help is on the way. If you're new here tonight, I want to put my arm around you and tell you, as dark as it may seem tonight, help is on the way if you stay with us here in the lifeboat of AA. There's nothing out there for you, only pain, trouble, and misery.
If you're an alcoholic, you belong here with us. Stay here with us in the lifeboat. And that's so true. I mean, isn't that what Dr. Bob said in the story when he met Bill Wilson? It was the first human being that he ever met that he felt fully understood him, and not because he read it in a book somewhere. Now I would like to tell you, about 36 hours later, these two men put me in a car and brought me to my first meeting of AA.
And coming to a meeting of AA is probably the greatest singular event in my life. Everything else is secondary and tertiary. I'm so glad there wasn't a guy with a clipboard at the door saying, hey, check the box for what you want. I would have checked the box for not drinking. I would have been delighted. I got that. But I got so much more than that. I got me back, I got you back, and I got him back, and I'd lost the whole lot.
Now I would like to tell you, at the end of my story here, I would like to tell you that I took the ball and ran and scored a touchdown, but I came into AA with a lot of old ideas. Barroom mentality. Barroom mentality that might serve you well at 2 o'clock in the morning in some gin mill, but was not helping me in AA. And I had people trying to help me, sponsor, home group, and I'm here to tell you, you can phone them at the coffee pot at 7.30 at night.
I've done it. How's it going, Paul? Oh, it's going great. You know when untreated alcoholism would come to visit me, 2 o'clock in the morning. The could'ves, and the should'ves, and the would'ves, and the guilt, the shame, remorse. Another sleepless night. And every night, about 3 o'clock in the morning, this book would magically appear on my bedside table. And it wasn't a big book. It was called, Where I Should Be In My Life By Now, by Paul McQuaid.
I hope you don't have one of those books at home. You start reading that book at 3 o'clock in the morning with no drink and no program, you're ready to put a rope over the rafters. I was doing, talking about the triangle, I was doing unity. I was going to plenty of meetings. I was doing service. I said, I'm making more coffee than Juan Valdez, are you kidding me? But I wouldn't do doorknobs, I wouldn't do recovery.
The steps seemed touchy, feely, warm and fuzzy. I'd do these steps, I'd have wind chimes hanging up around the house, you know.
[00:50:04]
Wearing flip-flops in the wintertime, you know, that type of stuff. Contempt prior to investigation, you're looking at it. I was two and a half years into AA, I've been to jumping off places twice in my life. Once with drink, and once with no drink and no program. It's a different type of pain, but pain nonetheless. I came into AA, I didn't owe much money. Two and a half years into AA, I was thousands upon thousands of dollars in debt, and I know why today.
I was still trying to feel good, band stuff, but the one guy I can't get away from is me. And a guy, I had a sponsor but a name only, and a guy came up to me one night at a meeting. And he says, Paul, can I talk to you? I said, yeah. He says, you're dying. And you're dying right in the middle of AA. He says, you know what you're like? You're like a starving man at a spiritual banquet. With all this food on offer, and you're over here living on bread and water.
That's exactly what I was doing. I still wasn't convinced. The next day, this is two and a half years off drink, I'm driving out of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, onto the Gowanus Expressway, six lanes, rush hour traffic in New York City. And a guy cut me off. And I go, really? I chase after him. I jam him against the guardrail, I'm blocking three lanes of rush hour traffic. I'm not that type of guy.
I never did anything like that when I was drinking. I go back to the guy's window, there's an Asian man sitting behind the wheel shaking. His wife's crying in the passenger seat, and his three children are crying in the back of the car. This is two and a half years off drink with no program. I get back in my own car, I hit my head on the steering wheel, and I said, I'm crazier off drink than I was on it.
And in some respects, that's true. I drew to my sponsor's house in name only. He was sitting up on his porch smoking a big cigar. Sober a long time. And I pulled up, I says, Jimmy, and I told him what I just told you. And he sat back, smoking the cigar, and he goes, how old were you when this happened? I says, Jimmy, this happened 20 minutes ago in the Gwantz Expressway. What do you mean, how old? Remember when we got lost in translation here, you know?
Hooked on phonics, the shamrock version, you know? As mentioned here this weekend, Dr. Thiebaud had a phrase to describe the way I was living, His Majesty the Baby. He says, you're like a child in a man's body. Number one, they don't make cribs in your size, that's number one. Number two, if you don't get into this program, if you don't get free from you and start living here and now, your life's going to go unlived in sobriety, and that's on you.
We talk about all the terrible things that happen in AA, you know the saddest thing in AA is the unlived life sitting in the rooms of alcoholics anonymous. He says, you're like a spectator at your own miracle show. This is your miracle, Paul. The least you can do is participate in it, and against my better judgment, in fact, everything that's helped me in AA has been against my better judgment. I get into the 12 steps of AA.
Is it nice to do the steps and find out who you are and who you're not? Yeah. Get a full knowledge of your condition? Yes. But when did my life catch on fire? When did great events come to pass in my life when I turned around and I tried to bring another man through this program? That's when things started to happen for me in the alcoholics anonymous. And it's not easy. If you're new here tonight, it's not easy getting sober.
Getting sober is probably the hardest thing you'll ever do in your life, except one other thing, drink yourself to death. When the roller coaster goes up and the roller coaster goes down, just don't get off. Stay on. Ride it out. We throw the word miracle around a lot in AA. I don't think it's ubiquitous. What is a miracle? It's a complete reversal or upheaval of the laws of nature.
[00:55:02]
It's in my nature on a Saturday night to be lying drunk somewhere, and I'm not. Now how did that happen? It happened because of me. It happened because of alcoholics anonymous. Now this is not a sales pitch. If you're new here tonight, there's a miracle here with your name on it. Nobody can take it for you, and nobody can take it from you. What does George Eliot, the writer says, it's never too late to live the life you're meant to live.
And that's what I want to say to you. It's never too late to live the life you're meant to live before drink took you down a different road. So nobody can take it for you or from you. Come all the way in, sit all the way down, and start to live. I mean, it's not an incredible place. It's the only place I know where you get to live two lives in one lifetime, and we talk about our stories of what we used to be like, and thank God I'm not like that today.
I'm not going to stand here in the last few minutes, and it's been said all weekend, through difficult times and sobriety. But here's the wonderful thing, now that I've found youse people. I never have to go through anything alone again. If I'm going through something alone in AA, it's because I want to. You know what gets you in trouble in AA when you've been sober for a while? Social pride. How can I go to my home group and thank God I don't do that?
I'm guilty. I mean, I've dropped the ball many times, but I'm a squeaky wheel. If you're in my life, I believe the squeaky wheel gets the oil. I need to be actively sponsored. I need somebody in my life to this day. What's the old saying in AA? When you're inside the jar, you can't read the label. I need somebody to stand outside the jar who will say, Paul, it may appear that way, but that's not what's happening.
Because our disease, what's it Roar says, we don't see things, people don't see, alcoholics don't see things as they are, they see things as they are. And when I'm trapped in self, when I'm living from the neck up, you know what it's like living in? The fun house. You know those mirrors? Some sort of scene, but all right. I come here because you put things in perspective. I'm actively sponsored. I try to sponsor other people.
Chuck Chamberlain, I have a new pair of glasses. His sponsor, a disease of perception, coming here and getting things put right size. And through difficult times in sobriety, I said earlier, I remember both me and Ralph at the same time. Went through a divorce at 20 years sober, same time. Resentment to here, how about up to here? But thank God I didn't go through it alone. I went through it with used people.
My daughter, I got two children. My daughter at that time, she was nine years of age. There's another guy involved, it was terrible. I'd be sitting in the living room saying, what? My life was falling apart right in the middle of AA. But what do I do? I turn the gun on myself. I'm not a good AA-er. How come I didn't see this coming? Thank God for used people. And I'd be putting her to bed. And she'd be saying to me, Daddy, I don't want to get divorced.
20 years sober. But thank God used people, one day at a time. It's easy to do what you want to do in AA. That's a walk in the park. I got sober doing things I didn't want to do. Or more importantly, doing things I didn't believe in. My sponsor said to me at that time, take the high road. I don't want to take the high road. But I took the high road. I took actions I didn't want to take. And I did things that I didn't want to do.
And I got results that I could not deny. And I got through that difficult time. Ended up getting remarried. I got a 19, that oldest girl, she's 19 today, Kristen. And my youngest girl's Dahlia, she's six years of age. I know what you're thinking. I don't look old enough to have a six-year-old daughter. That was my wife's greatest fear when the baby was born. She was going to walk into the living room and realize somebody's diaper need changed.
And she wasn't sure it was mine or the baby's. And those two children, oh my god, that girl, she's at college today, just spoke to her dad,
[01:00:02]
Rockaway, they're having the Irish Parade, she's having a wonderful time, and the little girl, Dahlia. I'll tell you two stories about them and then I'll sit down. My 19-year-old, she's now 19, when she was a few years ago, she's into the theatre, and we have a local theatre group, and they put on a production, and she got the lead role in Legally Blonde of Elle Woods, in the musical, she's a good singer.
And every night, I'd be sitting in the front row, right where Judith is, with a bunch of flowers. Now if I said to the guy next door to me, hey, you know, I was at my daughter's show every night with a bunch of flowers, he'd be like, what do you want, a medal? But I tell youse people, because you know, and I hope I don't forget, you put one drink in me, not five or ten, one, I'm not sitting in the front row, I'm sitting in some bar, telling some guy about my daughter and the show, but I ain't there, because that's alcohol.
You put one drink between me and you, as much as I love you, you're coming in second place. That's the nature of doing business with a guy like me. So this programme and this fellowship has allowed me to show up not only in my own life, but in your life. The little one, Dahlia, on her last birthday, I was going to say, my wife decorated the whole house like the land king. She loves the land king. And she got up that morning, and her eyes were like so wide, and she's like, and I picked her up, and she says, Daddy, I want to be five forever.
I thought my heart was going to explode. That feeling. I looked for that in vodka. It was bogus. It was counterfeit. It was phony. Alcohol promised, but never delivered. This programme promises and delivers, and promises and delivers, and delivers things of real value. Oscar Wilde, the Irish writer, says he knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. These people in AA have taught me things of real value, and you're my people.
It's so good in life, in a world that can seem uncertain at times. It's so good to know who you are and where you belong. I'm an alcoholic, and I belong in Alcoholics Anonymous, and that frees up so much of the hard drive. That frees up so much bandwidth for the good things that life has to offer, and this people who don't mix. I'll tell one story about Northern Ireland. I got sober in New York when my brother's sober back in Belfast, got about 29 years.
I used to go back there regularly when I first got sober. We talk about people who don't mix, Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. There's only one place they mix, Alcoholics Anonymous. I was asked to speak at a meeting, this was during the Troubles, a prison outside of Belfast where they keep all the paramilitary prisoners called the Maze, and it was Christmas time, well the day after Christmas, Boxing Day, and during the visiting hours one of the Protestant paramilitary leaders got murdered, and the country was on the brink of a civil war.
It was bad. And I was asked to speak at a meeting in Belfast that night, and I said to my brother, we can't go down into Belfast tonight, they're burning buses, there's barricades, it's bad. And I'm like, ah, we'll go anyway. He says, Eupen, the four of us get in a car in West Belfast, which is all Catholic, and we drive over the peace line into East Belfast, which is all Protestant, to go to this meeting.
And we take this circuitous route, and I love A. A. Gallo's humour, when one of the guys in the car says, just think, the last time four Catholics were in this part of Belfast after dark, they were in the trunk of the car, you know? I'm like, okay, you know. And we got to the meeting, and the young kids over there, they do this thing called joy riding, where they steal cars and drag them around and burn them out.
So we pull up, four strange faces in the neighbourhood, and the kids are like these teenagers, and the guy would stand outside the meeting, the chairperson, small meeting, and he recognised
[01:05:02]
one of the guys in the car, and he said, hey, to the kids, leave that car alone. These guys are friends of ours. They're like, okay, they knew who he was. We went into that meeting. I can't think of one, I mean, the country was in the brink of a civil war, I can't think of one place that night where Catholics and Protestants were sitting together, but they were sitting together in a meeting of A. A. And the Protestants all knew who the Catholics were, and the Catholics knew who the Protestants were, but all that stuff was left where it should be, in the parking lot, and we talked about our common problem, and our common solution, and in that, there's far more unites us than ever divides us, and I love that.
Now, I'm not going to tell you we went leaving the meeting singing Kumbaya, but I felt good knowing those guys were sober in the world, and I felt they felt that we were good, and we were sober in the world. A. A. We get a front row seat for the very best humanity has to offer. I've never in this neighborhood before in my life, but I guarantee you tonight, if I knock on a few doors, I'll find somebody drinking themselves to death right now.
Oblivious to what's going on here, and what's our job? To stay sober, help another alcoholic, and keep those doors open. If A. A. ever goes down, and I hope and pray it never does, it won't be from the outside in, it'll be from the inside out, because we forgot our primary purpose. We got caught up, what did Dr. Bob say, in things that were appealing to the scientific mind, but of no place in A. A.
And I love the fact that the doors are open here tonight. A friend of mine was going to G.S.O. in 1961 to pick up literature for a new meeting, and he goes in to pick up the literature, and there's a guy sitting with his feet up smoking a cigarette. This big, tall, gangly guy, and my friend's only got six months sober, Steve H., and he goes in, picks up the literature, and the guy's smoking a cigarette, and the guy goes, what do you got there?
Oh, we got some literature for a new group up in the Bronx, and the guy put his thumb up like this, and said, another open door, and my friend went on ahead, and somebody says, do you know who that is? That's Bill Wilson. He didn't know who Bill Wilson was, he's just like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna, that was what Bill Wilson said, another open door. The doors open here tonight. I don't want to be here the day the music died.
Oh, the music used to play, like that iconic Don McLean song, but it doesn't play anymore. The music has been playing here all weekend, loud and clear, of how to go from a place of powerlessness and unmanageability to a place where you can access power on a limited supply. I thank you for my life today. I thank you for my family's life. I thank AA. I'm the first person in my family ever to come into AA, and there's been alcoholism in my family as far as the eye can see.
So because of my alcoholic sonomas tonight, I'm standing here like our dear friend Clancy would always say, and I'm standing here tonight with my good friends here, and I'm safe, and I'm sane, and I'm sober, and that's only because of Alcoholic Sonomas. So if you don't mind, I'll end on the Irish blessing, because it sums up how I feel about you and how I feel about Alcoholic Sonomas. May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, and the rains fall soft upon your fields, and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand. Thank you so much.