So without any further, I'll give you Bill Tobico from Buffalo, New York. Bill? Ain't that something? You only got one glass of water there. That's all. I'm only gonna be here a little while. My name is Bill Tobico. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Bill. When I first started to talk and look at a crowd like this, stand there and be nervous, like now. And I used to ask this little skinny, uh, uh, guy who'd been sober about 500 years, "Why do I feel so inadequate when you get up there to talk?" And he said, "You are inadequate." I like that. And but he didn't leave me dangling. He said, "You are carrying a spiritual message. That's why you feel inadequate." Amen. He says, "Your, the part of you that's your body that got so sick when you drank is carrying a spiritual message, and it's unusual for it. So that's why you feel the way you do. So when you feel inadequate, just remember you are." But you know something? I'm sober through the grace of God. There's no other way to put it. I can't understand it. I don't have to explain it. All I have to do is accept it and enjoy it. I was born on the Branford Indian Reservation. My social drink. The biggest, biggest… I got told so many Irish jokes the last couple of weeks, you know? The biggest insult you can make to an Indian is tell him that he drinks like an Irishman. You want to get in trouble with the whole tribe, just go up there and say that out loud and see what happens. Okay. Told you I got even. That take care of my social drinking, all right. But you know something? The, the attitude. I understand in my life that I had to develop an attitude, and I got one, you know. Now, I have trouble with it, too, you know? But, uh, I had to develop an attitude. And when I was a young boy running around up there in the reservation, I used to go to this old Methodist church. I took Keith up there recently and introduced, uh, showed him the name on the back. There's a brick up about this high, and my name is scratched in there. I wanted to let him know that I'd got to the church, and I hadn't just walked by it, you know? And, and I heard them old songs, and I heard that pastor preach about the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. I thought, "One day, when I get big, I'm gonna be just exactly like him." But about that time, I had to go to work in the tobacco fields up there and get some clothes that matched and fit together a little bit. And when I got up there, I run into a little short tobacco curer from West Virginia about this big. He could sing better songs than the minister. Tell better stories. I found out later he was drunk all the time, and I became like him. But the attitude, the rebellion, the re- the total turning away from this power greater than ourself, and I turned my back, and I meandered away. Nothing deliberate, just a turning away. And by the time I'd walked down the road a little ways, I had forgotten all about it. And never again did I have anything to do with anything spiritual until I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. That's an attitude. Except once in the Canadian Army. I don't know what I was doing in there. I wasn't mad at anybody. But I was in England, and they were, this Canadian Army's a Protestant army, and about seven or eight hundred of them Protestants would get out in this parade square, and they'd march up and down. Nobody knew what was going on. Uh, an officer would take a little salute. We'd all go off down the street behind some band that's all out of step. We're all out of step. Go into the woods. It's three miles inside there. The pass is, uh, 300 yards away. And, and you never can, you never know what's happening. By the time you do the whole thing in reverse, it's chow time. Well, them Roman Catholics had a different deal. They had a chapel right next door to the barracks, and they chopped a hole in the fence. They'd sneak through there, said a couple of fast Hail Marys, and they were back in the sack before we went around the parade square the first time. I changed my religion. That's an attitude, see? And the attitude is one of rebellion. I still get mad when somebody tells me to do something, even if it's gonna do me some good. I get mad first and think of it later, you know? I don't know whether you drunks, the rest of you drunks are like that, but that's the way I am. I found out later, "Bill, you're not really a slow learner." They keep coming back to these meetings. They keep coming back. It seems like I've never learned anything, you know. I do the same things over and over and over. I don't drink. I don't have to be drunk. I, uh… Uh-oh. They, he pulled the latch on the trapdoor in case I go too long. We used to play a little game up in the reservation. Went like this. You go, "Woo-hoo," you know, like them Indians do. The Indians are obsolete anymore. We don't have them anymore. Now we have, uh, uh, dysfunctional families on the TV. But in the old days, the Indians rode around and around in wagons, you know, and that's what they did. "Woo-hoo-hoo," you know? We used to run back from the basketball games and in the evening, and the guy, and we'd go, "Woo-hoo," you know? The boys go up and hit the trees and bounce back. And the guy that make the loudest echo is the champion. Well, you're looking at him. When you do the same thing down behind the City Hall in Buffalo, New York, something happens to you. They lock you up for your own protection. I weighed 225 pounds, black hair, more of it, and I didn't want to be protected. But about that time, that K9 corps came, came out. You know what that is? That's man's best friend. They open the back door of them little trucks, and them puppy dogs jump out in the street. They're always about three foot high, and they got mouths like alligators, and they got great dentists, because they show a lot of teeth. And they hum. And they do something for you spiritually. They give you the humility to get into the truck without causing too big a fuss. And when you get captured any number of way, number of times like this, you begin to get the message. The message is your life is unmanageable. So about that time, another thing came into my life. And it's called fear. Oh, not those kind of fears that we had when we were in the war. Not those kind where your mouth dries right up and you don't know which way to go or why. Not those kind. The other kind, those nameless fears, those things that you know are gonna happen to you, but you don't know when, but you're sure there must be. And I start staying home. But when you start drinking half gallons of Olde Priory Port like I do, something has got to ta- happen to you, you know? I used to love that stuff. It'll make you walk up the walls and cross the ceiling, you know? Down the other side, take a drink of water, and go back just to show off and let them know it wasn't a mistake. Well, it's good fun, you know? All that drinking. And finally, finally I got, I got sick of being captured too, so I stay home now. But half gallons of Olde Priory Port do something wonderful for me. Yeah. They make me break out in insanity. That's why I belong to the program. So here I am, living in the corner of Carolina and Niagara, right down town Buffalo. They had all the slums and everything were there, all the old wooden buildings. Now we got a whole new set of slums, and they're concrete now. But, uh, here I was living in this place, the kind of place where the snowballs go through in the winter and the birds fly through in the summer, $55 a month with heat. And I'm six months behind. Real solid citizen, you know? And I'm living in this place, and the woodwork around it is all kind of rickety, and it falls down once in a while. You crouch, tape it back, you know. And I threw this half gallon of wine. It bounced off the bedroom door, went right through the kitchen window. The kitchen window is this by, high and about nine foot tall. Took everything right out, three stories down. The wine kept on going and went right through this man's, uh, nice big roll-out window. He built an entranceway into his garage apartment, and went all over his nice white tile, up on his white wallpaper, splashed his ceiling. And he lost his sense of humor and called the police. Next thing I know, there's a loud knock at the door. I open the door, and there's two of Buffalo's finest standing there. Previous, two months back, I'm sitting on the edge of the tub, and I'm, uh, uh, saying to myself, "You're not really making it," because I had gotten the message quite a while. I was one of those guys that you talk about in Buffalo, the old guys used to talk about, uh, uh, booze fighters. And they explained that I, I was up against something that I didn't have a chance to win over. See, and this is the way I was, and I knew that I had a problem, but how to get out of the dilemma that I was in. And I was sitting on the edge of the tub, and every once in a while I get these little moments of sanity when the, when it would get a good whack at me. The truth would whack at me and hit me right between the eyes. And I'm thinking, "Oh man, you're really not making it." Within a couple of weeks, I'm saying something else: "My God, help me." Now, for a guy who has turned his back on God, I don't know where the help is supposed to come from. See, and I open the door, and there's two of Buffalo's finest standing, and I'm sure these guys are not angels. See? And they looked at me, and they said, "He's sick, and he's drunk, and he stinks, and we'll let him go." And down the stairs they went. Around the landing, and there was a big piece of plywood, four by four by three quarters of an inch thick, and I picked it up and threw it down the stairs at them. That's insanity, right? I qualify. It bounced off the thing and went down the thing, and up the stairs they came, one mad and the other one madder. Here we go again. Clang. You know? Oh, what a wonderful feeling. I made it again, you know. Here I am in jail, you know. And then that night there's all kinds of citizens there. It was a beautiful April evening, and they're all there, you know. We're all sitting there the way we sit when we're drunk, you know. Really not expecting too much or just kind of we're there. And them Canadians, I like to tell this in Canada, them Canadians get captured too, I noticed. I'm sure Ohioans don't, I know that. Mm-hmm. And, uh, the Canadians, they get captured, and then they have a characteristic. They like to sing. One of the songs that was popular then, you know, I don't care if I never go to bed. Three hours later, they still don't care. And finally they all pass out or whatever it is we do. We were planning for them to get laryngitis, but they didn't. And finally it all goes quiet, and in the morning they come out and they got an unusual alarm clock, a tin cup rubbed along the bar. You know you're not home. See? They come out and they got that beautiful hospitality breakfast. Ice-cold cup of coffee and a greasy donut all boiled in the same pot. You never know what to do with it, you know, just kind of hope it crawls away, you know. And they line you up, and they put these things on you, and they go click, and they're always cold. I think they keep them in the fridge, you know. And they hooked me to some other guy who smelled just exactly like me. And I looked at him. He's got black hair, and he's young. We can still get away. My idea is to run, boy. And they hooked me to some old fart on the other side. Where am I gonna go with him? "Rah, rah," he's going, you know. "I spilled more booze on my tie than you ever drank." You ever hear that? We get them in the program even, though. Sometimes if they get mellow enough, they call them elder statesmen. They stay like they are, they're bleeding deacons, see? And their wives pray for them to go to heaven soon, you know. Oh, we got them all. Poor Satchmo Benson wasn't sweet, you know. And here we are, you know. And, uh, now they put us in these trucks. The dogs have got a day off. And they, everybody climbed in, and I'm hooked to these two guys, so I can't get away. But they pushed me in, and I was last, and they shut the door. When you get in a truck, and there's eight or nine drunks in there, there's always one in the middle, and he's always wet. And he's doing what drunks do best. He's drawing attention to himself. See? Then it gets warm and kind of smelly, and then first thing you know, he gets sick. Ah, he goes, you know. A whole bunch of funny-looking stuff goes sailing through the air, you know. And what do you do, you know? Oh, I tell this for a reason. Drinking is glamorous. And I would hate to see anybody miss some of the glamour. Well, he, there's another characteristic about drunks, though. He turns to, uh, say, "God bless you." Or, "I'm sorry. Listen- So the I'm sorry one says, "I'm sorry," ah, starts coming from four different directions. There you stand there. And you go up in front of the man, and you got some of this spaghetti or whatever- … leaning on, laying on your ear, and you don't know it's there. Okay? See, drinking is so, oh, beautiful, you know? I got some friends back in Buffalo, you know, they, they've been sober a while, you know? They smell good now and they look good, and they say, "I, I wonder what it'd be like?" I tell them, "Well, I could tell you a way. Next time you get downtown, make sure the guy is ripe. Go over and open up his top coat and take a good deep whiff." That's what it's like, you know? The smell. I don't have a sense of smell, so that's why I talk about it. But I can see the misery. I know what it's like. Oh, they say, "Oh, you've been sober now. You forgot what it's like." No, no, my body got old, my memory didn't. I can still remember how it is to be drunk, you know, and I can still remember all of these things. It's right, reliving the whole thing. So they take us up in front of the man. Well, all the down in the bottom, in the bullpen when they're lining us up, there's this lady down there. Now, she's a good-hearted lady. She combed everybody's hair. She's got half a comb. All 109 of us. How do I know 109? I had to go back and find out about my record later. That's how many were there. And she had half a washcloth, and she wiped everybody down. Now, there wasn't any water down there, and where she got that thing wet, I don't know. But can you remember when you were drinking that there were things that you would- Oh … glad you don't remember? Well, I'm sure nobody's like that here, but that's the way I am. There are some things I'd just as soon not know about- … and that's one of them. I wouldn't want to count all of them, so I'll tell you. So here we are, and, uh, we go up in front of the man. And that morning, the judge was in a hurry. You know, and he cleaned them right out fast. He said, "Front three rows, stand up," and they'd come up, they'd shuffle. They were already prisoners. We had, at this time, what we called a revolving door drunk. He went from the jail to downtown to the hospital to the jail to downtown, and that's what you called him as you got to know him. And you got to know him by name and got to know him as friends because them's the kind of guys that I talked to a lot, you know? And they were the kind of guys that helped me stay sober, too. They… Oh, I forgot where I was. Oh, yeah. And he said, "Front three rows, stand up," and they come up and they shuffled. They were prisoners already. And the judge banged on the desk, "Uh, uh, you're charged with such and such a thing. How do you plead?" Somebody went, "Ah." He said, "90 days, Wendy." Big farm, 2,000 acre farm, lots of cows. You know what cows do in the wintertime? Well, they eat that hay. It's ca- reconstituted hay they call it, you know. And they need somebody to clean it out, see? They cleaned them right out quick, and when I came up, I was all by myself. I couldn't figure that out. I looked at the judge. You know, judges are always 40 feet high. That one was. I found him, I met him later. You know, a little wee squirt like this, you know? But that morning, he was 40 feet high, and he was looking over and he said, "What's wrong?" My wife was standing next to me, and she said, "He's a good man, but he drinks too much." The judge looked at me and he says, "Have you got too much pride to go to Alcoholics Anonymous?" I didn't even know what he was talking about. But he said, uh, "You go across the hall and see what you can do about your drinking." Shoo, and away I went fast. I don't know where my wife went. But I went across that hall and ran through the hallway, went into the other side, jumped over the rail, sat down in the front seat, and heard my first AA meeting. I was not impressed. There were only about six people there, see? Some of them got up, "I've been sober two years, four years," some of them old farts, you know, "15 years," you know? So what, you know? But at every AA meeting, there's a power of example. Mine was a little short Indian about this big, and he was telling a fish story. This is fishy. "I've been sober six months." Whoever heard of an Indian sober six months? And his face was shining. He'd been washing. Oh, I got asked today if I'd found a soul or something like that. And you know, when you get to know people around here, they ask you the darnest questions, you know? So here he was, and his face was shining. Big smile on his face, no teeth. Canadian hockey player. He had a bright green corduroy jacket on and a bright red tie, and I figured he's either sober or he's nuts- … 'cause nobody walks around our neighborhood dressed like that. I found out later Alex suffered from another disease. He was a colorblind Indian shopping in a Polack store. You know, when the power of God and the grace of God comes into somebody's life, it never comes announced. It doesn't come wrapped up like we would think it would come. But it, nevertheless, it comes because the power comes with it. And from that day to this, knowing absolutely nothing about AA, didn't know the steps, didn't know you were supposed to drink coffee, didn't know nothing, didn't know absolutely nothing, but the booze went away, and I became delirious with joy. It's the only way I can describe it. And I was so happy that the booze was gone that I forgot that when God does things for people, he shows off. I had headaches. Living around Buffalo, you get sinus problems. And I'm shoving on my head all the time, trying to make it ache somewhere else for a change. I'm pushing on that thing, and I had a kneecap that used to float around, and a couple of ankles that were real weak, and they'd fall over on a crack, you know. I'm a bricklayer. Now, you know how long I'd last on a construction job. And all that healed up like that, too. And the date, I tell you the date only for one reason, because it fits in my story. The date was April the 9th in 1961. So in a few days, it's gonna be quite a while for me. Now, I ain't like these other guys here with the 40 years and all that stuff, and I'm glad they're here. Why? Just think, if there wasn't anybody in front of us, where would we have started? And that's why I like, what do you call them, uh… Well, they're starting to call me an old-timer now. I think it's because of my age, not because I've been sober that long. When I tell them, they said, "There ain't no old-timers in AA." "Oh," they said, "what about the book, Dr. Bob and the good old-timers?" I said, "They're all dead." I said, "But the ones who are alive, they are not old-timers. They are called experienced AAs. If we're going by the book, let's stay by the book." Experienced AAs, isn't that better? Huh? So that's the way I talk to my mouthy pigeons. You know what mouthy pigeons are? They're the ones that throw back on you the very same things you've told them the week before. Okay? And then nothing works, you know. And they bring up your own words and throw them in your face when you're sitting there sniveling about something, you know. Sniveling, yeah. I know you ain't got no tables like that down here, but we got them in Buffalo. They're called disgusting tables, and the snivelers go to them. "Oh, I just lost my last million this morning, you know." "Oh, my, my husband is gonna find out about my boyfriend if I don't straighten up a little bit." And they're sniveling, "What am I doing wrong? Why can't I get the serenity in this program?" Whoa. The book says you clean away the wreckage of your past. That means that I cannot do the things that I used to do when I was drunk and expect to get some different results. See? So I have… it means I gotta change somewhere, and the change comes when I change my obsession for alcohol and self-destruction and replace it with the grace of God. See, I'm one of them guys that go around and do a little Bible punching once in a while. Don't get excited. But I say it in such a way that it sounds like it's Bible punching, but it's not really. See, when you quote the big book, somebody thinks you're Bible punching. There are words in our big book… Now, can you imagine a guy coming from Buffalo, an Indian off the reservation, coming to the place where AA was born and telling them what happened in their big book? But, you know, the but, I'm gonna let you fill that in yourself. Our big book has words in it that indicate that they've been borrowed from someplace. There's a thing that says, "Faith without works is dead." I wonder where that comes from. Admit your faults freely to him and to your fellows. Sounds familiar. Sounds like I heard it up on that little farm, that little church up in the reservation. And you see, I started to get inquisitive. Oh, some of these old-timers have a way of making you think. I used to hate thinking. I don't mind it so much now because I can't do it so good. And every once in a while, one of the guys there, I don't know if he was doing this deliberately or not, but it seemed like he used to stand up… He was a good-looking man, tall, slim, nice jacket on all the time, and he used to say, "I'm sober through the grace of God." Never once did he ever explain it. Where does he get this stuff? I asked myself. And I didn't know the questions 'cause I was too dumb to know. And I didn't know who to ask. I didn't want to offend anybody. I didn't want to have some of them dumb answers either, 'cause I'd afraid I might punch somebody in the mouth. See? So I started to look myself. They suggested things that I should do to take the steps that are suggested, so I got used to the suggestions. They said, "We suggest that you read The Varieties of Religious Experience." And I wondered why would they want to do a thing like that? I don't even know what the book is. Oh, there were some of them guys. Oh, there was a book by Richard Burke, uh, was called, uh, Cosmic Consciousness, and they suggested that I read that too. It wasn't even in print. I don't know. But you know something? I found it because I was looking for a way to stay sober. And why would I make a decision like that? I saw something I don't like. A friend of mine, now I didn't know he was gonna be such a good friend, but at the time when I came, I was in three weeks, and this guy went and got drunk. Why do I bring it up? He was 15 years sober. I said, "Am I gonna belong to some outfit where I get drunk after 15 years? I might as well stay drunk now." You see? But I still didn't know the questions, so I started looking. This is where I quote script. Says, "Without faith it is impossible to please God. And he that comes to God must believe that He is, and He is a rewarder of them who diligently seek Him." The part that I like and applied to myself was the seeking. Where did that come from? I saw it through prayer and meditation. God could and would, if he were sought. It was all there. You see? And I started to read. And when I read The Varieties of Religious Experience, I found only one guy I could identify with, of all people, a preacher. His name was John Wesley, and that's the church I used to go to, right? I could identify with him because he had had a spiritual experience. And I kept going on and on, and I was finding all these little things and couldn't share them. I didn't talk in a program. Some guy, after I'd been sober about five or six months, somewhere around there, he said, "You haven't talked yet." I said, "No. Do I have to?" He says, "No." I said, "Good, then I won't." He said, "Why?" I said, "Because I don't know anything." There's a lesson there. And it kept going on and on. Finally, at the Salvation Army, I'm, I'm now seven, eight, nine months sober, and they went and made a mistake. There was a big mix-up. The speaker didn't show up, and they said, "Stand up, Bill, and say something." I said, "I'm glad to be here, and I'm glad to be sober," and I sat down, and everybody- But, oh, what the heck is that? You know? Some little old guy sidled up to me. There's always jobs around that nobody wants to do. This was one out the old folks home. He said, uh, "How'd you like to make the great talk again Friday night?" Great talk Friday night? Uh. He said, "I'll pick you up at 6:30." I said, "Okay." Got out to the old folks home. It's called the Echo Group, and you can tell why. There's… Go down underneath all the pipes and stuff, and you go into this little cement room. There's 18 old guys in there, all the way from 130, 300 years old. 16 of them go to sleep, and two are deaf. "Here's the speaker," you know? Oh, that's ego-building, you know? The right kind. And I stood up and said, "My name is Bill. I'm glad to be here, and I'm glad to be sober," and the most humiliating thing ever happened to me in my whole life happened right then. Why does it always gotta happen right in front of everybody? A tear rolled out of my eye, down my cheek, and stood there and sat there and burned. I could feel it. And this big lump in my throat, I couldn't say anything. And I just stood there and blubbered. Seemed like 10 minutes. Actually, about three, four seconds. Then the lump broke, and I started to talk. And for the first time in my life, I shared with human beings my life and how I felt inside and all the frustrations and the bewilderment and the terror that I felt all those years, and my total incapacity to help myself. And I just shared it with them. I poured it right out, just as fast as I could go. And when the coffee came in 35 minutes later, the meeting went over. And lo and behold, a tremendous thing happened to me. I felt like a load had been lifted off my back. I walked out the door. I could have floated out. And within four or five days, I had a tremendous spiritual experience. Oh, in AA, we call it a tremendous experience. You know, in, in church circles, they call it being filled with the Holy Spirit. The feeling was so strong that I knew there was somebody in my automobile. But to ask me to explain it, I couldn't. And for the next four months, I'm already happy, but for the next four months, I'm intoxicated with joy. And I stayed that way, and I stayed that way. People kept shaking me by the arm, "Ain't you ever coming back?" I hope not. You know? Man, oh, man. And I was reading this, I was reading, uh, uh, AA Comes of Age, and I was reading in there. I said, "Did you see what happened here? Look at this. This changed the whole course of this man's life." And they'd say, "Why don't you shut up?" "Don't you know anything but that big book? Don't you know how to stay sober any other way?" I said, "Now you got it." See? And I'd shut up for two minutes, and I'd start again. Same old stuff, you know? I'd, over and over and over. Finally, one day, I got a telephone call from the central office. This is the way you get 12-step calls, you know? There's a guy coming through the city court. He's got a cab driver's hat underneath his arm. Go over and get him up, and that's all they gotta do. Never mentioned his name. That's all they did. But my halo is at a little driky angle. My little wings are fluttering. I come in the house, walked up them old rickety stairs, and went into the front room, and my wife was standing there, and she said, "Well, Saint Paul, did you save them all?" I don't have to tell you what I did. I got madder than a wet hen. "Why, you bunch of crumbs in that miracle group. If it wasn't for me, you'd all be drunk. I'm the only one working." There was only four of us in the group. What the heck? I was doing a tremendous thing, right? See? And it went on and on, but I went over to the miracle group again that night, sat down, heard a speaker, got back in the pink cloud with a difference, with one foot in the gutter. And it's the only time I can look down at another drunk is when I have the opportunity to help him get up. That's all. This program has been good to me. My wife came to the program exactly the same time I did, exact same time. She came miserable. I came happy. She said, "When that SOB gets drunk, I'm gonna get drunk." That's Sweet Old Bill, in case you don't know what it is. But the SOB wasn't getting drunk, you know? See, I'm telling her story for a reason because when couples come, you know, God is not the kind of person who just bestows benefits on one. The couple comes as an entity. They are the heads of the household. So the day that I come across the bridge there and had that tremendous spiritual experience, my wife had been going through, well, an awful lot of torment. She sat down in the chair and she said, uh, "I can't fight this thing anymore. I surrender." What a way to win, you know? When I came in the door, up to this time I was sober eight months and she hadn't even spoken to me. She used to say in her lead that she worshiped the ground that was coming to me, you know? I'm sure nobody here is like that. And I walked through the door, and here she is standing there. She's all dressed up. She's about five foot eight and redheaded, and she kissed me. Whoo! After eight months. I looked at her and I realized something happened to her. And I said, "You want to tell me what happened?" She looked at me and she said, "You want to tell me?" Let's get a cup of coffee and we'll sit down and talk. Two and a half hours later, we're still sitting there talking, and laughing, and crying, hugging, and kissing. The kids are all there. Joy, healing in a household that's gone down the drain. The restoration power and the transforming power of God. How else can I put it? Our book uses the term transformation, so I'm not using words that are foreign to the people who read the books. Then our lives changed, and for the next nine years we lived nice, normal type lives, doing everything we could to stay sober and help another alcoholic. And she came home from a movie, laid down on the bed, had a cerebral hemorrhage, and never got better. Died. Come on. What do you do when your right hand is gone? You do what the program tells you. You live one day at a time. So my moment of decision, I've noticed all down through the years, the committee that I have that runs my life or tries to, whether the committee is in here or the committee is sitting there, they cannot make the final decisions that it determines which way my life will go. Through prayer and meditation, I get an opportunity to capitalize on the wisdom to make those decisions. It says to practice the principles in all your affairs, and I wasn't up to making decisions, but here they are being made for me. And I said to myself, "Well, stupid," you know, so I wouldn't get anybody mixed up. "What are you going to do now?" Standing in the floor and everybody's gone. The funeral is all over, and you say, "What do you do now?" And you get on with this business of living. You have an obligation. Your life is not your own. It has been bought with a price, and the price is all the struggles and the experience that those people went before went through. You see why it's good fun to be sober? You see why it's good fun to come here every once in a while and spray yourselves, you know? Wash yourselves, get full. Pat one another on the back, and hug and kiss one another. You know, we are demonstrating to the world that God's power works through the off scouring of the world. Wonderful, wonderful way to live. You know, you get to make a lead once in a while. Wow. And the people that you meet, the uniqueness of each one of them, the individuality, the growlers, the grumblers, the happy ones, all the different things that make up mankind. My part. Takes two people in the world to make a compatible relationship: a hugger and a huggee. You see? Oh, I know. We're Anglo-Saxons. We gotta have that nice, "Don't come too near." "I might like you. Stay over there a little bit. Uh, like, I'd rather view you from a long ways away." You see? That's what I like about AA. Says in the back of the book, it says, "Our book is meant to be suggestive only." Says, "We realize that we know only a little." Whoo! Can you imagine a drunk, bunch of drunks admitting that and putting it in a book? But more will come to you when your own house is in order, for obviously you cannot carry something that you don't have. Well, and I got one that I like the best. It's in the family afterwards. Now, there are a whole bunch of absolutes in our big book. Besides those ones the Oxford Group had, we improved on it. We got twice as many. The ones that A's like. Says, "We absolutely insist on enjoying life." What a commandment, right? We can even conform to that one. Nobody even gets mad when you tell them that. And that's the one I like to use. You go down to the halfway house where the guys are not really on the ball, and you tell them things like that, and they look at you. But what you're stirring up down deep in that spirit, that hidden well that springs up, you're stirring them up. Oh, they may not understand you right at the time, but the day will come when the heart will open up and the mind will open up, and they'll say, "That's what that guy meant." Another changed life. And whose business is it to supply the power? It's God's business. I found out two things about God. One is to worry when he worries, and to get along real well with him is to stay off his throne. Good stuff, isn't it? Now, if you take exception to anything that I've said, then you can only take the blame and put it on them old guys that taught me. I got news for you, you're going to have a tough time finding them. Because most of them are gone, you know. So get mad at them, don't get mad at me. I like being sober. I absolutely insist on enjoying life, no matter how horrendous it gets. And these are the things, this thing this morning, puts the icing on the cake, puts the spice in the life. I met people here that I met 1972, and of all places, Newton Falls, and you didn't even know it was here. But it is. Can you imagine coming back and meeting people after all that time? You know. And hearing the news of the ones who don't make it. I learned something when I was in the new, brand new in the program. I was in Hamilton, Ontario, and there was this guy was just coming, and he hadn't had no furniture in his house. Me and three guys were standing in the middle of the floor. Now, these old guys were sober a long time. And they were talking about their buddy, and he'd got drunk. They said, "We ain't nothing we can do for him." And one said, "Oh, yes, we can. We're going to pray for him right now." And they put their hands together, and I was standing. They grabbed me and pulled me into the group. Here are four drunks praying for one drunk who's gotten drunk. We are asking God to do something for us that we couldn't do for ourselves. It's called God's grace. I want to thank the committee for asking me. I'd like to say this to you. God bless you from now and forever. Thank you.
