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Source: Rainer L – BOX OF CHOCOLATES – 2025-09-11.m4a File: rainer-l-box-of-chocolates-2025-09-11.mp3 Duration: 00:50:04
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Thank you very much. My name is Rainer. I am an alcoholic. My sobriety date is January 2, 2005. My home group now is the Donut Holes. It's a 715 park meeting outside, seven days a week, regardless of weather, regardless of season. It's been an absolute delight. I stumbled across it back in January when it was six degrees outside. But there were six people sitting around in the park, and they were just the warmest bunch of folk. I'm a North Carolina guy. I moved to New York almost two years ago, and it's been just one of these ongoing grand adventures, which I suppose has been sobriety in general.
I think that we're sort of a well-met bunch. You have this thing here about you never know what you're going to get, but I never know what I'm going to give. I'm a whatever comes up comes out kind of drunk. But I do understand that I have a general task of describing in a general way what I used to be like, what happened to me, and what I'm like now. Perhaps a little bit about how I formed a relationship with a power greater than myself, which has solved my problem.
We also share this little alcoholism thing, glass in hand, warping a mind to such an obsession for destructive drinking that only an act of providence can redeem us. Hopefully we're sharing in a spiritual solution as well. A little bit of precursors, I suppose I should mention. It's nice that he knows that he's my sponsor, but I do have one. I've got to have a guide on a tour, and this has been a way of life that I couldn't simply find.
I got off to a good start in life. My mother was describing to me recently that as a child I would just sort of wake up and sit in my crib, happy and contented, sort of an early precursor to a fifth step promise of being able to be alone with perfect peace and ease. That didn't last long. About two years old, I left home to go to preschool, and I was exposed to life beyond the family and just this growing sense of comparative value and who was I and who were you and how did I fit in and how did I measure up and just this churning of the mind.
This feeling that I was out of place, didn't fit in, didn't belong, didn't know how to get along, the sort of life without an instruction manual kind of thing. There are ideas that accompany that. My alcoholism was really driven by ideas and feelings as much as it was a physical manifestation of an allergy. And so I was always very concerned, perhaps not even with what you thought about me, but with what I thought you thought about me. Maybe a little bit of self-centeredness in that.
Never cared much for an honest effort. I liked recess because, of course, that's the school activity, but I'm going to half steam my way through everything so that if I actually put forward a bit of effort, I give a darn that I can exceed the expectations that I've lowered. I remember as early as 11 figuring out that I could get a 17 on a test, and that would be good enough. So the idea of settling for only as much perfection as will get us by in life, that's my mind.
But, you know, the split households really helped me develop a convenient relationship with the truth, you know, to tell this one this and that one that and figure out some gray area in the middle so that I can just squeak by. Had my first drink when I was about 12 there. I had never really been drinking at the house. You know, there was a glass of wine at a family birthday celebration. You know, Grandpa had a tradition of getting a bottle of vodka once a year for Christmas. He was an old Russian professor from the Ukraine.
But it was never something that I knew much about. And I went to visit an aunt and uncle in Hickory, North Carolina, and I don't know that they knew quite what to do with the 12 year old nephew. And so their solution was to take me to an ABC store to let me pick out a bottle. And I can remember, you know, the tile, the glass, the glint of the light on the bottle, the marquees with all of these fancy and adult names of tequilas and Kahluas and vodkas and not knowing anything what I went for, you know, alcohol, you know, that's a feel good drink.
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So it's got to taste good. I picked out a bottle of Anisette, which is the licorice liqueur, really thick like a cough syrup. And there was the thought process. I like licorice jelly beans. Maybe I'll like how this tastes. My aunt and uncle let me take a shot with dinner. They were early to bed, early to rise, went upstairs to go to sleep about eight o'clock. I came back downstairs and I didn't bother pouring anymore that night.
Nothing magical happened, nothing horrible happened, but there was just some warmth, some internal calm, you know, a return to that childhood feeling of just being able to be in my skin, to stand in my feet without all of this figure it out kind of thinking that drove my life. And so when I went back to Durham, that was something that I sort of pursued and it became my point of connection. I had the magic moment. I was 13 and there were a couple of neighborhood boys about my age and we would walk down to Ninth Street by Duke campus and there was a homeless guy named Slim.
We'd give him a couple of dollars. He'd go into the BP and buy us 40s and we would sit on the train tracks at the end of Main Street and Ninth, you know, on a bridge back to the bridge and feet out towards the tracks over by Sam's Blue Light Pass bottles cut up. And there was just that click, you know, that moment of, you know, a 13 year old man with an answer, no more questions. I knew intuitively everything in life just fell into place.
And so that was my pursuit, you know, was finding that. And, you know, I had a bit of a backdrop and so it was easy going, but I was never interested in being where I was supposed to be doing what I was supposed to do. You know, so as often as I could, that was the adventure, you know, and it really sort of blinded me to certain parts of my life pretty quickly. I remember a couple of times, you know, my father had us every other week on Thursdays.
You know, that was the sort of custody arrangement at the moment. And I went to a party with a couple of friends. I had a fifth of vodka, a fifth of Kahlua and a bottle of wine that was aged in a pine barrel. I threw up in at least three driveways before passing out in the backseat of the car on the way home and they couldn't get me up. They couldn't rouse me. And so they just rolled me and my father comes out, you know, at six o'clock the next morning and he sees his 14, maybe I was 15 year old son.
Passed out drunk in the gutter. And it never occurred to me that there would be anything other than pride in his eyes, because in my mind, and I can't see past that, like I'm out there living life to the fullest on the edge of a real human experience, you know, building a resume of adventure for myself. And I'm going to be able to tell everybody about how much fun I had, even though I don't remember the night before. And, you know, all of these things. You know, my parents lived about four blocks away from each other and there was some issue, some problem of the day that I was having.
And I wanted to talk to my dad about it, you know, and after a decade of contentious court battles, mom wasn't feeling that, you know, she said, no, locked the door. So I got my keys and I'm going anyway. And she takes my keys away from me. So I go back into my room to get a bat. Just going to break a window and go. She tried to take the bat away from me. I threw her through a wall, you know, stone sober, but not able to look past my own ideas of what's best for me.
I ended up plea bargaining my way through high school. I had missed more than half of my senior year and they have these truancy laws. And so for the first time that I can remember in conscious life, I had my parents in a room together outside of a courthouse and I told them that I was going to drop out of high school. I was going to go bag groceries so that I could make something out of myself. They had a different idea. They set up a meeting with my high school principal, who was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I was extended to terms of a plea bargain that allowed me to get through.
And I'm good at coasting, you know, give me a little bit of natural aptitude and then I'll use that as an excuse to minimize my effort. But I did well enough with the busy work and assignments that I was accepted into the one college that I had applied for. I left Durham and I moved to Asheville. And if there was a place where things took off, you know, my father's philosophy on parenting was tell me where you're going to be and be careful. You know, I had a natural preference for living under his guidance, you know, but when I was in Asheville and I was on my own, I mean, I'm three days into college and the guy monitor or dorm monitor finds me naked and bleeding from the head in the public restroom after one too many beakers of moonshine.
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I mean, I'm just off and running. I'm the same kind of A's and F's student. I'm skipping my final exams to go out and drink. It has nothing to do with drink. I've got a nobler purpose. I'm there for an education and not a degree. It's a counterculture F the man kind of thing. You know, they tried to expel me a couple of times and I would appeal it and I would go Dean's List for a semester and then back to old habits. Because if there's one thing I understand, it's spree and remorse. You know, somewhere, I think it was in my fourth senior year, they started charging me time and a half tuition.
They were ready to be done with me, but I was just coasting on life, trying to stay there, you know, outside of reality for as long as possible, racking up credits, but not towards any particular degree program. It was the missing ingredient. It was a way to overcome all of the barriers that I felt between my self-imposed ideas and insecurities and the rest of the world. And what happened when I would go out and look for these adventures and connections is I started getting scraped up. I never gotten any real trouble. God looks out for fools and drunks, and I'm a double winner.
But one of the stories that I will often tell, I had a job working dorm security and I spent my shift from 10 to 2 drinking vodka with the co-ed. I walked back to my house downtown and my roommate was sitting on the porch having a beer and he asked if I wanted to go to the Moonshine bar. You know, we always put gloss on things. It was a guy who sold Moonshine out of his garage from sundown to sunup in Tennessee. But like for us, it was the Moonshine bar. And I absolutely wanted it. So we get in my car, we're driving west on Hendersonville Road and there's a train coming across.
And my friend Ryan asked if I want to hop the train. And so we pull over in the Pizza Hut parking lot. You know, I've never said no to a bad idea. And I've never hopped a train, but it's not unlike what you would imagine. You run alongside it for a minute, you sort of grab, pull yourself up and then, you know, whoop-dee-doo, there you are on the side of the train. You know, we didn't talk about anything either. So Ryan just hopped on the train, hopped off the train, went back to the car. But I'm thinking adventure. I want to find out where this train's going.
But I start getting bored and I start getting thirsty and I realize that I have no idea where Ryan is. And I climbed down the side of the train a couple of cars and he wasn't that far ahead of me. And that's when it occurs to me that I have no idea how to get off a 25, 30 mile an hour freight. I look over my shoulder and there are these big pine trees two and a half, three feet away, you know, off the side of the tracks. And I have enough alcoholic sense to know not to jump face first into them.
But I can't really see what's going on. So the answer is to climb on top of the train to get a better lay of the land. And when there's a break in the tree line, that's my Hollywood action moment and I jump. There are no trees because we're on an overpass over NC-74. You know, land on my feet, fall to my knees, smack my head. I still have some broken glass floating around in there. You know, I think it's raining until I realize it's red, take a few minutes to sort of gather myself. And I realized by the mile marker sign that my girlfriend lives about a mile, mile and a half from there.
So three o'clock in the morning, I'll just walk over to her house and everything will be OK. Get picked up by the cops for walking bloody on the side of the road, taken to the hospital, refuse medical attention because 18 stitches in the head is a waste of time when I have a bottle of vodka in the freezer at home. The train company agrees not to press charges against me, trespassing charges once they realize that I'm not going to sue them for my own stupidity.
I never had consequences, you know, but these are the things that happen. And so I start pulling back and I start drinking alone. You know, I start drinking at home, you know, coming up with different reasons. Oh, well, I'll just save some money, you know, I'll put together a nest egg. I never saved a dime. I spend every single bit of it on a drop, you know, and life got small. You know, at the end of my drinking, I was in a four bedroom, two bath house in downtown Asheville. I had water on in the landlord's name, but the water heater was electric and as a philosophical objection to the principle of security deposits, I am not spending my drinking money to have power in the house.
There's oil in the house. Have power in the house. There's oil in the furnace, you know, December and January in the
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mountains, but the pump and the blower are electric, you know, so I had no heat. I had cold running water, no power, a chair and a candle holder I had made from a tall boy, and I was left alone, you know, without any worry about interruptions and intrusions. Didn't have a phone. Nobody came knocking every now and then. I, you know, have a friend come by and drop off a quart of moonshine, a brown paper bag, grandpa's cough syrup, you know, and I was just, that was the life that I was looking for, and the short form is in the midst of this, I met somebody and I became convinced that she was going to be my answer, you know, she was the solution. I was having a lot of thoughts of what's wrong with me, you know, I had given up on the idea of living alone. I got some alcoholic roommates or at least heavy drinkers. We were filling up three or four recycling bins a week, but I'm still using my dorm security job as a way to smuggle my empties out of the house.
I'm drinking in my upstairs room. It's basically a closet. Every now and then I'm coming down and sitting on the couch, you know, so that I can pat myself on the back for being such a normal guy, but I'm always listening for a car and the driver, a key in the door so I can turn the lights off and run upstairs and pretend like I'm not there, and I'm asking what's wrong with me, what's wrong with me, and this lady, Melody, like she was just the answer to all of that.
You know, I asked her out, asked her to marry me. She said she'd like to know me for more than two weeks before I did that. I was in hot pursuit, you know, and even as I'm all of this profession of love, the days that I'm excited about are the days that I don't have to see her so that I can drink the way that I want to without having to worry about who else is around and how many had I had before and what was coming up next, and I could just uncork and unwind, and she had the nerve on one of those days to come by uninvited and unannounced, and she looked at me and she said, Rainer, you're drinking yourself to death and I can't be a part of it, and so I summoned up the maturity that I had carefully cultivated over the years, and I ran crying down the hallway and locked myself in the bathroom, and she came after me, and she said she was sorry. She wasn't trying to hurt my feelings. She didn't mean it, and when she said that she didn't mean it, there was something in me that just snapped. You know, there was a recognition that she had said something that was absolutely vital and true, and the idea that she would try to take that back to apologize to annul it just did something to me, and I got up off the tile and I went to shut her up, and I knocked the door off its hinges, and I can feel that sound that it made. I can see the look that was on her face. She ran. I fell, and I don't know much else, but the next morning, you know, as desperate as a broken person can be, I reached out to my little sister, 19 years old, and a year sober, and this thing called Alcoholics Anonymous, and I said I need help, and we didn't have a district website, but I had a sister, you know, who trusted in the program, who trusted in her God, who trusted in you enough to turn me over. You know, she proceeded to type out the entire Asheville schedule in the body of an email, and I recognized an address, 697G Haywood Road, the Serenity Service, and it just sort of fit, you know, and so I went there that evening, and I like to joke around, and you know, it was me and three guys that night, and it would routinely be 50, but I would joke around, you know, if there was a fourth person, I think I would have turned around and left. I was terrified, you know, I didn't know what to do with people. I wanted nothing to do with you, but I somehow knew that if I was going to not drink, I would have to be around other people who are not drinking, and thank God it was a small meeting, three guys, and I was able to introduce myself as an alcoholic and say I have no idea what this is, and I'm not even sure that I know what that is, but what can you do for me, and these three guys, I can't remember who was there, and I have no idea what they said, but there was just some click, you know, some little bit of comfort, you know, a sense of safety that perhaps there might be a place, perhaps there might be a solution, and thank God that I had nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, because I just sort of fell into it, you know, Serenity Service was seven days a week, three or four times a day, and I had just picked up this habit, I'm going to go to 8 a.m., and I'm going to sit and wait for noon, and I'm going to sit and wait for the 5 30, I'm going to sit and wait for the 8 o'clock, I'm going to go back home, sit on my hands, shiver through the night until I can go back to this safe place across town, you know, and be around those AAs. The one other thing
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that I think I knew when I got here, and I don't know how I knew it, but my desperation and my desire was not going to work, and it was not going to last, you know, I was so convinced of my own brokenness, you know, that the most powerful urge would be of no avail, you know, I somehow knew that if I was going to be able to stay here, I would have to do something to participate, I would have to put some skin in the game, and, you know, I didn't know anything more than I knew, and that was self-will and self-reliance, and so I started making resolutions, because God knows that works well for a drunk, right? You know, I made a resolution that I was going to read at every meeting I went to, you know, but I'm a week sober, and I'm reading the traditions, and I get this bright idea, you know, that I'm going to read them without looking at them, so that you can know what I know about this thing, of which I know nothing, you know, I made a resolution that I'm going to say something at every meeting I go to, and I thought I had a good game for theory, so never having a direct conversation with a recovered alcoholic, like, what's wrong with me telling you my theories about what a fifth step would be like, you know, I mean, I just wind them up and let them go, and they allowed me to do that, you know, they did not slap me around when I felt a need to jump back in a second time, because I don't think that you understand what I meant to say when I didn't say it while I was sharing, you know, all of this just sort of crazy squirrel cage of a brain that I have, and you know, it was an emergency room, it was triage, you know, like, I had to stabilize for a little bit, and they allowed me to do that, and what happens for a guy like me, if I'm coming into this outfit, if I'm putting forward an honest effort, it doesn't have to be a good one, you know, but I was doing all that I could, you know, to the best of my ability. Everything worth doing is worth doing poorly, you know, so I mean, I gave myself a lot of grief for a long time about the fact that I engaged with this sort of resolution and resolve, you know, try with the will or fall by the wayside type of mentality, but how could I do anything other than try to wrest happiness and satisfaction from life by managing well, you know, my entire life had been an attempt to manage well, and it doesn't turn around all at once, but if I'm here, if I have an open mind and a willing spirit, things happen, and my reasons for being here change, and it happened, you know, I was two, two and a half months sober, and they used to read the daily reflections, and I heard a couple of members talk about how they used that book to help them start their day on good spiritual footing, and it just struck. I need a copy of that book on that day at that meeting, or I'm gonna drink and die, you know, and so I ignore everything that people are sharing, and I'm just like watching the clock and waiting until the meeting's over so I can go to the chairperson and get that book.
It ends, and I run up, you know, and I need one of those books. How do I get one? And he's a little taken aback. His answer's slow, you know, and he says, well, you know, there's a literature cabinet in the back. If you go, and you get a book, and you bring it to me, and then you can buy it at the group's cost, and he's giving me this whole thing, and he's not halfway done, and I'm running to the back of the room, and I throw open the doors on the literature cabinet, and it's nothing but dust and cobwebs, and I kind of lose my mind, because if I don't get that book on that day at that meeting, ugly alcoholic death. So I run back to him, and it's empty. It's empty. What do I do? And he says, well, it seems like we need a literature coordinator. How about you?
And I owe my sobriety to the invitations that I have received, you know. I found a moment of grace, you know, a self-imposed devastation that I could neither postpone nor evade, and I do not doubt God's plan, you know, in terms of a flimsy reed proving to be a loving and powerful hand of God. I got here when I was supposed to, but for all of the credit that I give God, the fact that he works through other people, and you all extended me an opportunity to participate in my own sobriety, you know, that you were able to set forward, set a principle, spiritual in nature, that would give me an answer, you know, to a hopeless condition of mind and body. I owe my sobriety to human invitation as much as the divine moment, and so that afternoon, I walked out of District 70 office
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with a hundred dollars of AA literature. On group credit, my recognizance, you know, with trust from somebody else that I wasn't going to try to turn around and hawk it on the black market, you know, things started happening. I didn't skim my copy off the top as a finder's fee, you know, I paid the four dollars for daily reflections, and, you know, now I have purpose, you know. I had service before I had recovery, you know, perhaps I was experiencing a little bit of unity without it, but, I mean, give me all three legacies because, you know, life as a one-legged man for me just didn't work, but it started with service. It started with those group chores and the fact that, well, you know, then they gave me a key so that I could restock the literature, and other than that, what do I do? Well, you go to business meetings. What in the world are those, and why are we wasting our time? This thing is about not drinking, you know, but we start talking about these things, and, you know, sobriety, you know, over the course of the last 20 years has really, you know, come full circle in some neat ways. I was remembering recently I talked to a member today who is from Asheville, and I was asking about their experiences with Hurricane Helene last fall. I got a chance to go back and speak at their first post-COVID district picnic, and then two weeks later, Western North Carolina got wiped away, but I was sharing with her an experience in 2005, you know, when I was just finding out what business meetings were and that there was a group conscience and some of this stuff, you know. One of the things that we talked about was how we could, you know, contribute and lend some support to groups in Louisiana after Katrina, you know. I'm going to have an experience, and it's going to come back in a way that can benefit somebody else that can give me a little bit of empathy and understanding for what another person's going through, you know, in the model that perhaps I can put myself in the next man's shoes for then I have a better chance to understand how I would want to be approached.
You know, throughout all this time, you know, I've got this self-directed effort, you know. I'm very singularly focused on the sobriety idea, and perhaps I can live in one dimension for a while, you know, but it comes at a cost, you know. So I was nine months sober. I was sleeping in my 1985 Toyota Corolla. I was eating two or three times a week if I could find somebody to buy me a sandwich at the meeting after the meeting. I was keeping the car on the road and gas in it by driving new guys to meetings. Haven't read a book, haven't gotten a sponsor, haven't worked a step. I'm patting myself on the back for what a good job I'm doing, keeping myself sober. And I found out that my little sister, who was my entry into this thing, was relapsing down in Wilmington, getting locked up on some B&E charges. And for the first time in my life that I can remember, I did something for somebody else without any thought of return. And I left Asheville and I went down to Wilmington to try to be helpful. And I ended up in Wilmington for the better part of the next 18 years.
I wasn't really happy about being there. You know, it didn't take long for some of that to bounce back. You know, I was there because of circumstance. I was there because of my little sister's decisions. You know, but I had a little bit of fellowship. I had my people in the mountains. And so I was trying to do this thing where I once again wanted nothing to do with nobody. And I wasn't talking to people. I was going to meetings because I knew I had to, but I wasn't opening my mouth. I wasn't saying hello. I wasn't offering an introduction.
And I don't do well if I'm not in contact, not simply around, but participating, you know, having those dialogues, you know, a daily discussion with sober alcoholics. And so three or four days into that, I'm a little bit at wit's end and I'm in a food line grocery store on the ice cream aisle. And I see a guy I think I recognize. I ask him if he's a friend of Bill's and he says, yes, you know, his name is Bill. And that man would be my sponsor for the next 13 years, you know, until he passed in 2018. And, you know, again, it's just this, you know, invitation to a life beyond anything that I could have imagined. I started meeting with Bill and we started going through the literature line by line through the big book, you know, to have this place where I could start to see, um, place where I could start to see the realities of the way that I lived within the experiences
[00:30:01]
of members, you know, in Alcoholics Anonymous, to see myself within the lines of that book, you know, the way that Bill talks about Winchester Cathedral, you know, thus was I convinced that, you know, God will disclose himself if we need him and want him enough. When we drew near, you know, start working steps, start doing these things, you know, start, continue, you know, to take the actions that, you know, I just had subtext for, you know, you know, the easy answer, am I willing to go to any length is yes, you know, the reality is I'm also willing to go to any length to make sure that a fifth step is a length that I don't have to go to, you know, and what happens, you know, I'm on the docket, you know, early 2006 in two weeks to be our Sunday night speaker at my home group, you know, and that's fine because that ain't today and, you know, I'm meeting with my sponsor and we're reading through, you know, the third step, you know, being all powerful, he provided what we needed if we kept close to him and perform his work well, we get on our knees, we say a third step prayer, you know, things that stand in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows, maybe that's a seventh, I'm a little garbled, you know, I get up and the guy who's chairing the meeting comes in and says, hey, I just got a phone call that our speaker canceled, so you're up now, you know, and five minutes before that I would have left, you know, like that ain't happening and I'm gone, you know, but instead I moved, I trudged, you know, one foot in front of the other, next great thing, you know, I was about 20 minutes into saying something, I was in the middle of a sentence and I just said, that's it, you know, and I didn't go back to my seat to close up the meeting, I mean, I walked out the room, out the building, you know, I went outside and I just collapsed in this emotional sort of devastation because I had a moment up there at the podium of thinking that I might actually have something to offer to somebody else and right on the heels of it there was an awareness that I was just so full of my own BS that there was no way for me to actually get that out, you know, clog channel don't flow, you know, and that was the night that I started putting pen to paper, you know, and writing a fourth step in these experiences, you know, AA gives me a momentum, I don't have to motivate myself, if I'm awake, if I'm participant in my life, if I'm looking for the opportunities, if I'm asking for God to reveal himself to me, he will, you know, if I'm asking for an opportunity to have a new experience, it's going to show up, you know, I had all of these thoughts about the things that I was going to do, you know, I was very motivated, I was a very motivated newcomer, I was a very motivated and enthusiastic, trusted servant, you know, if there was something that Bill was doing, it was something that I wanted to do, and Bill was involved in corrections, you know, so I volunteered, I went through all the PREA training, blue card, you know, stuff, and I went out there to the made a decision group at New Hanover Correctional, and there was a guy who was supposed to meet me out there for orientation, and he didn't show up, you know, but they let me through, and I was sitting in the VR trailer, and these inmates and convicts, these hardened criminals start walking in, and I'm losing my mind, I have no idea what to do with them, and I don't need to do anything, you know, they had been a registered group for, you know, 13 years at that point, you know, I just needed to be there so that custody would allow them to gather, you know, but my motivation wasn't to be of service, my motivation, you know, certainly as I look at it now, I wouldn't have told you that at the time, but I wanted to be able to raise my hand and say, if you're interested in doing this valuable service, come talk to me, you know, I don't escape ego naturally or quickly, but I do have a process of deflation, you know, a means of gradual progress, you know, day by day, hand in hand with another, and things change, you know, my reasons for being here, my reasons for being there, what it is that I think I'm going to contribute, you know, the idea that I'm somehow winning a reward for myself, you know, that a promise is earned, that grace is deserved, you know, these are ideas that start falling by the wayside, but I was very focused on what am I doing, and what more can I be doing, and how can I get from here to there, and there was an old timer who said, you know, if you're wondering whether or not you're ready to start giving back, ask yourself if it's important to you that other
[00:35:00]
people know that you're giving back, and if it's important to you that they know, then you're not ready to do it, but that doesn't mean that you ought not be doing it. I grow in Alcoholics Anonymous through a process of trial and error, you know, that's what progress is in this deal, you know, it's the honest effort, it's the backwards intention, it's the mixed motives of an alcoholic, it's me making resolutions, you know, in spite of the fact that a lack of power is my dilemma, you know, you know, I had a drive to do these things, but it's only by doing it that I realized the futility of a life lived on self-will, you know, what I can tell you definitively today is that my complete abandon is bigger than it's ever been, you know, I thought, you know, if we ask is protection and care with complete abandon, okay, well, I've got that check because I'm desperate, you know, but no, all I could ever do, you know, is offer today's complete abandon, you know, and to try to grow and enlarge a spiritual condition, you know, through work and self-sacrifice for others, you know, there is no getting there, there's only going, and, you know, this New York experience, you know, it really has sort of highlighted for me in a whole new way that I have no idea what's good for me, you know, I was thinking earlier today, I got a chance to attend a 9-11 memorial, which was just differently powerful than those have been in the past, you know, being here in New York and Manhattan and hearing from people, you know, a different firsthand experience, it's not me in the mountains in North Carolina watching something on TV, you know, you know, there is a lady who was talking about, you know, hospital called and all of the everybody so that they would be, you know, a resource and a triage center, and about five o'clock, the entire hospital crew was standing outside, looking up at the sky, watching the clouds of dust. And my friend Marsha asked somebody like, why are you all outside?
And he looks at her and he's just, you know, torn and ragged and he said, no one ever came, you know, and she realized that was because there weren't survivors to come, you know, and it's just an entirely different experience to have had that today. But, you know, it got me thinking about this notion of not knowing what's best for me. And I appreciate the set aside prayer that you all started with 18 years a daily AA in North Carolina, and I had never heard that until I got here. You know, on my seventh sober anniversary, I was really excited because it was, it had fallen naturally on a Saturday, which is the big meeting for my home group, you know, and so I'm stoked because I'm going to go there, I'm going to celebrate, it's going to be, you know, this pump it up festivity. And I was dating the woman who would become my wife at that point, and she stopped me as I was getting ready to leave, and she said that she needed to talk to me.
And she told me that she had been shooting heroin for the last month, you know, and my life sort of fell apart, you know, I went to my home group, I had muscle memory and habit, you know, regardless of how I was feeling, there were things that I was doing. You know, and I kept having this thought of like, why is this happening? This is not what my sobriety is supposed to be about. I don't decide what my sobriety is supposed to be about, you know, you know, it's God give me an opportunity to be of service to somebody today, you know, and for whatever reason, you know, my opportunity there was to be a positive example, you know, of sobriety, of faith, of prospect and kindness, you know, not to not to have reward, not to have a stable, you know, and for the next 10 years, you know, it was an in and out of detox back and forth across the state, city to country, you know, moving her daughter from our home, because I couldn't guarantee her safety when I was off at work and just, you know, a whole bunch of mess. I don't get to decide what my life is about, you know, week and a half ago, I found out that my mother has terminal cancer and about six months to live. You know, that's not what things are supposed to be, according to my plan, my little plan and design, you know, but what's happening to me, I may not lose those plans and designs, but I have in a third step promise lost my interest in them, you know, with a deeper realization and grounding and the fact that I am in the role to play the role that he assigns, you know, the self determined objective
[00:40:04]
is no longer my thing, you know, it's boots on the ground, it's faith in your feet, you know, it's show up and see, you know, try and fail, do it poorly, make an honest demonstration on account, you know, I like a lot of these ideas, you know, I like grounding myself in the literature, you know, and the fact that, you know, what we do in AA is we share these experience, strength and hopes. My hope for myself is that it wouldn't matter if I didn't have any words to try to describe to you what life on a spiritual basis means to me, you know, that there would be something within an active daily demonstration that would allow a person to see that, hey, this guy actually believes in something and is willing to show up for it. You know, I went through three years of my life as an active alcoholic without ever saying goodbye to anybody, you know, literally never said the words, you know, I was just going to loiter and lurch until you turn your back and then I'd be out the back door, you know, when you left the room to go and get a refill and then I'm through your living room window and out on my way, but I am not going to say goodbye. You know, I like the fact that today I can act in a way that demonstrates a different principle and respect, you know, I was a lip service guy.
I remember I had a friend, we were supposed to go out drinking in downtown Asheville on a Friday night and he didn't show up and so I did what I was there to do, you know, I bar hopped, I wobbled, I crawled and I got as drunk as I wanted to be. Ran into him a couple of days later, you know, and very aggressively, you know, where the F were you? And he says, I'm sorry, I was out of town, my grandmother died, I had to go to her funeral. And I said, I don't care. If you weren't going to be where you said you were going to be, you should have let me know. You know, all the time I would have sworn on anything holy, you know, that one of my core convictions was that people deserve to be treated with kindness and respect, you know, but my ability to actually make a good faith demonstration of the things that I hold near and dear was zero. You know, I remember telling my sponsor, you know, Bill, Bill, Bill, you just don't understand. I have an alcoholic capacity for double standards. And he just looked at me and he said, Oh, you mean you're a hypocrite?
Bingo, you know, how about a simple truth? How about no gloss? How about just, you know, there's this definition, I think it's in the fifth step where it talks about a definition of humility, as a full recognition of who and what we are, followed by a sincere effort to become what we could be. What we could be. I'm not trying to hide from the fact that I've got these brokennesses and defects, you know, a self will run riot, you know, the consistent, you know, instinctual demand of give me more than my share. You know, that's here, you know, even in a recovered alcoholic, even as a person properly armed with the facts about himself and on the other side of a spiritual experience and all of this stuff that's in there, you know, but it's not the part that I feed. It's not the demonstration. It's not what happens when I open my mouth. You know, the thing that I example, the thing that I demonstrate, the life and the sobriety that I try to live is one of actual thoughtfulness through a demonstration, because I got to a point where I was so fed up with myself that it didn't matter to me what was in my heart. It didn't matter to me that there was conviction. If I didn't have something to be able to point to, to look at, to say that, yes, this thing is real, then it was just more hot air and I was sick of my lies, you know, so it's all about demonstration. And, you know, I think that's something that we see over and again through the literature, you know, I was always interested in do, what do I do? What do I do? What more can I do? How can I, because that's the means of attainment, you know, that's how I get the things, you know, but when I'm struggling with fear, the answer isn't what to do, you know, we ask God who he would have us be, you know, be of service, be available, be a son to your mother. It doesn't matter that I'm telling myself on a daily basis, oh, but I'm not ready for this. Well, too bad, little kid, this is what mom, mom has got going on, you know, and I'm going to show up for it and I'm going to be a good son, you know, I'm going to be there, I'm going to be attentive, I'm going to try to live up to all the examples that I've heard from.
I'm going to try to live up to all the examples that I've heard from, that I've grown from, that I've seen and witnessed that have allowed me to have this gift in my life. You know, because I have this idea, it's just one of the fundamental parts of my selfishness.
[00:45:07]
I skip things, you know, and at the end of the 164, one of my great lessons that came to me by God only knows, I can't even remember. You know, see to it that your relationship with Him is right, and great events will come to pass, both in your life and the lives of countless others. My approach to Alcoholics Anonymous, because of the desperation that I had, was about my life. The reality, the great reality, is that I'm just a countless other.
You know, I've done some things, you know, I've worked some steps, I've attended some meetings, I've shared some honesty, I've tried to help some people. None of that adds up, you know, to a life that becomes more and more meaningful as time passes. None of that adds up to much more than inwardly reorganized, you know, to being rooted within a new soil. You know, the fact that I'm able to do those things is because somebody took the time to make sure that I had literature to learn from, that I had experience to grow from, that I had a place to go to, you know, steps and traditions on the wall, and I have a responsibility there.
You know, I don't know how things are in other places, you know, we've got these different declarations, and the one that has really just sort of grabbed me and held me is our Declaration of Unity. This we owe to AA's future. You know, I owe my future to AA's past. You know, I've fallen in love with the idea of debt. You know, the more I get, the more I owe, you know, and with that, the opportunity to try to pay a little bit of it back.
You know, world has gotten big, AA has gotten large, we're all everywhere, but it never gets bigger than the person in front of you. And I'm willing to give that person everything, you know, it's a gaunt prospector. Really enjoyed having, I think it's a Thursday, whichever day this is, some time with a box of chocolates and, you know, I feel like I had a couple Alabama friends coming in and hopefully I got a few more of y'all now.
So I really appreciate the opportunity. Thanks. Thank you so much, Rainer, that was awesome. Thank you so much for joining us tonight where you never know what you're going to get. You will have to keep up, keep things going by coming back next week. We surely hope to see you then when our special guest is Ralph W. out of Los Angeles, California. And don't think you can come in at 6.15 and get a place in the room.
It don't work that way. If you like this meeting, please, please do as Bill Wilson always said, pass it on. You can help others right from your phone or computer and tell them about this special meeting. Everyone is invited to hang out with us after the meeting in the meeting after the meeting on the back porch. We like meetings on the front porch and back porch. And. Gosh, Rainer, do you have any closing comments and would you take us out with a prayer or.
Whatever literature base, whatever you want to do. I don't know that I have any other comments that, you know, I probably said a lot. All right. You know, but y'all are a treat and I'm grateful to be here. Going to. Look for the third step prayer just to make sure that I don't garble. God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and to deal with me as thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I might better do that.
I will take away my difficulties and my errors. Those were the third step prayer off of page sixty three. God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and to deal with me as thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I might better do that. I will take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those. I would help of that power that I love and that way of life. May I do that?
I will always. Thank you. All right. Everybody can yell at him. Thank you. Rainer. Thank you. That's it.