Audio
Transcript
Source: 1985 Montreal International Convention – Multi Speakers – A Daily Decision IN ALL OUR AFFAIRS – RS 06361.mp3 File: 1985-montreal-international-convention-multi-speakers-a-daily-decision-in-all-our-affairs-rs-06361.mp3 Duration: 01:07:56
============================================================
And then we'll join in a serenity prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Now there may be some here who are not familiar with our tradition of personal anonymity at the public level. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need to always maintain personal anonymity at the level of the press, radio, TV, and films.
Thus, we respectfully ask that no AA speaker, or indeed any AA member, be identified by full name or photograph in published or broadcast reports of our meetings. The assurance of anonymity is essential in our effort to help other problem drinkers who may wish to share our recovery program with us. And our tradition of anonymity reminds us that AA principles come before personalities. Now there's no current announcements that I'm aware of at this time, and each speaker we're having today has a predetermined length of time to talk.
Now the subject today is very apropos for me because, you know, decisions, a daily decision is not one of my favorite things. I'm one of the chronic procrastinators right up to the last minute. I say procrastinate to the point of panic and still can't make a decision. Now we're going to have some of our speakers today talk to us about this, and it's a great pleasure for me to be here today and be your chairman, and I will ask now if Judy W.
will please come up and talk to us about this. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, everybody. My name is Judy Whitehouse, and I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drinker. And a very grateful one. We may think about we're here for the 50th anniversary of AA, and it was only a few years ago, and I'm standing up here at such a great occasion, and it wasn't just a couple years ago that any time anybody called on me in the meeting, I'd have to pass.
I was really, when you're given a topic to speak of, you really have to kind of take an inventory in what you're doing in that area. So I guess everything happens the way it's supposed to happen for all of us. First of all, I'd like to, as we say, made a daily decision. I think this really for me ties into the third step that we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him.
And the interesting thing is that was a major decision in my life as far as the alcohol goes. But what the topic is today, it's a daily decision. And I can't forget that because it's a 24-hour program, and it's the word daily that's really, you know, where the program is at for me. And they say the third step prayer. I don't know if any of you have heard it. It's in the big book, but it says, God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and to do with me as thou wilt.
Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will. And a lot of that third step prayer for me is in that third line, relieve me of the bondage of self. Because although today I'm sober, a lot of the bondages of my past are still with me. And that's why they say it's not only a drinking program, it's a living program also. I'd like to share with you, we have a fellow in my home group, which is outside of Ann Arbor, the Selene Last Chance, maybe I should say Only Chance group.
And we've just had occasion to move to Midland, Michigan, which is a little bit further, and I'm in the process of changing home groups. But one thing I'll remember is this little poem he gave me, and it says, it's called, Let Go and Let God. And it says, As children bring their broken toys with tears for us to mend, I brought my broken dreams to God because He was my friend. But then instead of leaving them in peace to work alone, I hung around and tried to help with ways that were my own.
At last I snatched them back and cried, how can you be so slow? My child, he said, what could I do? You never did let go. And I carry that in my books for the day. Also, I guess really what I wanted to start with is talking about the third step. And what we're here to do is to share our strength and hope and experience. And that's all I can talk about. I can tell you about my decision-making when I was drinking, and there really wasn't one because most of my decisions were made
[00:05:00]
on an emotional high or an emotional low. In the morning I got up and said, I am not going to drink at all. And you know how long that lasted. And tomorrow I'll never drink again. But it didn't last, and all I know is that the thing that changed between that decision at that point in time when I was drinking and the decision today not to drink, and I still make it every morning because they say, you ask God for help in the morning, as far as your drinking and living problems go, and you thank Him at night.
And although my days can be very busy, those are the two things I still remember to do. And a lot of times my thank you at night is just one thank you for keeping me sober, because I can take an inventory of the day and realize that my sobriety has nothing to do with what I did that day. It was entirely a gift, because we can have a tendency to screw up every now and then. And I do that quite frequently.
And I think more as I practice my daily decisions, I realize the one thing that I didn't realize when I first came into the program, how human I am. When I first came into the program, they had the 12 steps. And what I mentioned before is for six months I passed the table and only sat at first step tables, because all I wanted to hear were the people's stories. And all I wanted was help with my drinking problem.
The rest of the problems, when they started talking about the second through the twelfth step, I heard the words spiritual and insanity, and I thought, I don't have any of those problems. Talking about character defects, I was so sick when I came into the program, that I really didn't think I had a single character defect. Well, the truth of it was, I was kind of living in a dream world, because any time there were feelings of anger, jealousy, resentment, any of, quote, a number of character defects, I drank them away.
I didn't want to face any of that. So when I came to this program, I was pretty much a babe in arms, and pretty much incapable of any daily decision making. And I guess when I look about it now, I think that the first decision I ever made in this program was that I'll give it a chance. And that wasn't really a full-hearted decision. I thought, I'll hang around here. I knew I'd come through a treatment center, I was sober for 21 days, and it felt good.
And that was the longest I'd been sober, in four years, I think. And I thought, 21 days, it really felt good. I felt like I was able to think. And of course, after 21 days, after being drunk for so long, you think you can tackle anything, make all the decisions in the world. And the truth of the matter is, you're right at the bottom line at that point. But I guess a few of the things that I heard at the table were, don't analyze the program.
And I didn't. I just continued coming to meetings. And when you hear people say, keep coming back, keep coming back, they're really speaking to people like myself, who quote, sometimes have the education, the brains or whatever behind you, but just don't have that ability to live. And when they see, keep coming back, they want you to come back for some of the real basics of the program. And many times, even today, when I'm having a struggle in life, I find that most of that struggle is because I'm not practicing the first three steps of the program.
Or else many times, I have to make a decision, a daily decision, of what step I am going to work on. Because so often I can go to a meeting and I can mouth the words of the program and say how great it is, I'm doing this, that, and that. And it's not so much being at that meeting, that one or an hour and a half, but it's going out there and hitting the bricks the next morning, and living some of that in your life.
And that's to the twelfth step. And today, with the daily decisions, it's like, how do they say it? They say that it's not so much the mountain that gets in your way, it's those, the sand in your shoes. And I guess I look at it, that my way of not drinking today is because it's not so much a big catastrophe in my life that's going to throw me, it's those daily little problems that I didn't deal with.
And I guess that's where the daily decision comes in, because it has to be kind of sometimes a minute thing. Today, for instance, one of the things was trying to be the best person I can. And sometimes a daily decision is just called getting up when you're supposed to get up in the morning. I mean, sometimes it's that hard. For me, even today, because, you know, now you're capable of a little more thinking, a little more decision making, but sometimes when you're struggling, it's those real basic ones that you're having the most trouble with, just doing the very basics in the program.
[00:10:01]
I guess one of the other things is that when I talk about my decision making when I was drinking, when I was drinking, I was more of a chameleon type person. Whatever crowd I was with, whatever group I was with, I pretty much took on the makeup of that crowd, the thinking of that crowd, the feelings of that crowd, and really just rode with that crowd. And today it's, you know, it's tough to go back to making some of these real basic decisions.
I said that the first, one of the biggest ones I made was, you know, after spending six months around the program and making that first decision that I'll try it. And that was it. And finding that there were people growing around me and I wasn't going anywhere. And it was at that point that I made another decision that I was going to have to work the program. And I think there's one word in an alcoholic's vocabulary that we really dislike, and that's the word discipline and work.
You know, I always have to remember that God doesn't do windows. You know, it takes, it takes a few of us to do that. And I think, I was down at a conference, you know, I'm trying to remember what it was. It was French Lick Indiana, the Indiana State Conference. And a lady spoke there and she had copies made of this. It was called The Twelve Principles of AA. And there was a principle listed next to each step.
And I'll run through the twelve real quickly, but I just wanted to mention that the third step, the decision making of the program, the third step's principle is action. The first one's honesty. Step two is hope. Three, action. Four, courage. Five, integrity. Six, willingness. Seven, humility. Eight, brotherly love. Nine, self-discipline. Ten, perseverance. Eleven, spiritual awareness. And twelve, service.
And it's just kind of another way of looking at the twelve steps and looking at twelve principles of living. And I really like that because, you know, as I said, the third step says action. And I know they speak in, you know, some of the literature I read of that one of the things, the sayings they have is that you don't think yourself into good living. You live yourself into good thinking. And it's one of the sayings, you know, like, I live my program sometimes by the sayings because those are the things that I can remember.
And when I'm really in a pinch and having problems, I can recall them real quickly. But that saying about you don't think yourself into good living, how often I sit there and I ponder and try to decide what kind of a decision I should make here, this momentous decision to be made, and I take no action and I don't take a decision. And you know what? The problem still remains. It's still there bugging you, gnawing at you, and making you sick.
And for me, a lot of the times I pray today that I'd be able to turn it over a little quicker than I have in the past. And that's what I'm trying to do. And that's what I'm trying to do and that's what I'm trying to do and that's what I'm trying to do in the past. Because it does happen. You know, the longer you're in the program, that first decision not to drink. But it's also the rest of those little daily decisions that get rid of the sand in your shoes so that you can stay sober and live a quality life.
For me, being free of alcohol and being dry and being here doesn't really amount to much. It's being here and being grateful and being happy and having some peace in your heart and having some peace in your heart and being grateful and being happy and having some peace in your life. And sometimes if we don't have that peace in our life, sometimes it's just knowing that we've had it, we've seen it in other people and there's that hope for the peace in your life.
But, you know, for me at least, you know, I guess the thing that I have the most trouble with is putting this all into action. And as I said, for me, when I first came into the program, the one decision about going to the meetings and finally starting to work the program and then there were other decisions to be made. One, to this day, I still have a great difficulty with when I had seven, eight months in the program and my father had passed away and my mother had a real resentment because I decided I wasn't going to move back home and live with her.
I was a single person at the time and we only lived two miles apart but I knew that if I moved back home I would drink again. And I think it's then that I made finally the decision that I was going to start working and that's what sobriety already meant to me. And to me, those first six months were a gift. And then, you know, the party's over, you've got to start working. So it's a working step. I also found that in working the steps of the program, there's another little thing that I really relate to and that is that life is a mystery to be lived and it's a mystery to be lived and it's a mystery to be lived
[00:15:00]
and it's a mystery to be lived and it's a mystery to be lived and it's a mystery I sit there and have asked for help, made a decision to turn my will over, but deep down in my mind I have decided what the steps are for the answer to the solution. And I think in the day-by-day today, you may say sometimes, you know, the answer is no. Simple as that. No. You can't have something. And I have found that many times the answer of no in my life has been a great turning point. And the problem is, is accepting it.
Because I can struggle with that turning point, or else I can go ahead with it. And the more I struggle with it, the sicker I get. I really get physically almost sick on the inside because I'm still struggling with a decision that hasn't been made. And when I make that final decision to go ahead, I find that things really settle down quite a bit and that's, you know, if I just let go and go with it and just figure the day is going to be a mystery, I don't know how this is going to turn out, that things work out and they're not in the way you planned.
And that's a great change for me from the rigid alcoholic behavior I had when I first came into this program. You know, we're often taught that we're in control of our own destiny. We're, you know, that's the whole culture now, you know, take control. And for me, as an alcoholic, I can't. Because when I started taking control, I screwed up that serenity to God grant me the courage to change the things I cannot accept. And I have to remember that I screwed up that serenity prayer to read that way quite frequently. And I've got to, you know, we have no control over other people, places, or things. The only daily decisions I can make are concerning my behavior. And my emotions don't have to rule my life anymore. As I take them one by one and decide, you know, many times it's a decision when you're sitting around and talking and you want to make a smart remark. And it's a simple decision like, that might hurt so and so. Maybe I should not say that. Reacting used to be the problem. And now the program teaches us that we have to do the acting. And I pray a lot over this. But all I can think of is when you first come into the program, we have so many little things that say, hang in there, baby. But I guess for me, it's not only hanging in there because that's dealing with my alcohol. It's also hanging loose in the program and taking each day as it comes. I could practice very well the 24 hours when it came to my drinking problem. But practicing the 24 hours as far as any character defects or making any other decisions in my life was a lot more difficult for me than to practice it with a drinking problem. And yet if I don't practice it there, all the things that lead up to a drinking problem will come back. And so I have to remember you have to work on the living problem every day. The last part of the third step is in the care of God as I understood him. And I'm only a human being today and I realize that a lot of times I do lose contact with my higher power. You know, there's times when I just won't admit that at the table.
You talk about the third step and you sit there and you talk about your higher power. And in the meantime, in your daily life, you know, 23 hours that went before that 24 hour, you can't find a contact with him. And I have to be careful about that because that's the honesty of the program, getting it back to the tables. But it also helps me to deal with something that somebody mentioned right when I first came in. They say that if you can't find your God, use the three initials of the word God. And that's called good orderly direction. So sometimes if I can't, quote, have this emotional feeling that, you know, I am close to my higher power, sometimes I have to go back to those three basic words, good orderly direction, and find out if that's what I'm living in my life. You know, it's getting easier and easier because a lot of the problems are reoccurring problems because I haven't handled something. And the longer I let them sit, the worse they become. And for me today, it's, you know, I don't have to worry so much about trying to make a decision and doing it perfectly. I think that was one of the biggest things I had. It was either I would sit there procrastinating about the decision or I'm going to do it perfectly.
And if I can't have the perfect answer or if I can't perfectly complete this project, I'm not going to do anything about it at all. And the program teaches us, I guess, this program, these 12 steps have taught me more than anything else that I'm not this
[00:20:03]
person that I thought I was way out here trying to deal with this person inside. That finally, you know, we're coming to this reality level in between that, you know, by working the steps of the program, that I'm finally turning into the person that's really I'm comfortable with. And I guess that's the answer to the piece, really, is if I'm comfortable with myself. And for that, I'm grateful. I don't know, it just feels so good to be here. I'm sure all of you feel the same way. It's just, you know, this is it. Fifty years and thank heavens for the people before us because it's not that our struggles are any different.
When you read that big book and you immediately look at it, I guess I was reading The Best of the Grapevine and I was reading an article and I thought, God, that's me. That's me. And I look back, it was written in 1930 something, and I thought, yeah, it's me. It's just, you know, a different time period, but the problems are still there. And it's an individual person that has to deal with all these universal problems and how we apply them in our own life. But I thank you, Marie, very much. And thank you all for listening. And like I say, I'm very grateful to be here.
Thank you so much, Judy. That was fantastic. I'd like now to call on Michael F. to share with us on this delicate problem. My name is Mike Fleming. I'm an alcoholic. I belong to the Save the Long Island group of Alcoholics Anonymous. And for this drunk, it's the best group in all of AA because it got me sober and it kept me there. Anything I say after that is kind of unimportant. But I was listening to Judy and my original sponsor had told me one time that AA and our principles, being our 12 steps, and even the slogans and the traditions, are guidelines and we have to live between them someplace. But within those guidelines, there's a lot of room for the individual. And I was listening to Judy and I thought how true that was because we approach things differently, but we're heading in the same direction, which is sobriety today.
And I think the one true goal I have in life is to die sober. Everything else has to come after that. I don't plan on dying this minute. But my higher power has more to say about that than I do. But I was thinking that most of my life, I didn't have to make decisions, so I didn't. In grammar school and as a child, my parents made them. High school was chosen by finance, not by choice of any sort or decision. Girlfriends, I was kind of shy and backwards, so it was always, I was always the last male and I was paired with the last female. But never really a conscious decision. When I was graduating from high school, my uncle said if Michael wants a job, they called me Mickey then, send him down to the bank to fill out an application, so I went down and filled one out and was hired. It was just that simple, but there was no decision involved. When I got married, we were part of a group that was dating and the others in the group got married, so I got married. Really, I'm serious. I sound like a roller coaster, you're stuck on the wheels, on the rails. There was a college examination being given for a scholarship, somebody said go take it, so I went and took it. And I got a scholarship. But drinking was much more important than college. So there was still really no decision involved. I worked for a bank at that point, early in my marriage.
I think just about before they were about to fire me, somebody offered me a job, which I took, but again there was no decision involved. It was just offered sort of on a silver platter and I took. But there was never any deciding. It was like a door was opened in front of me and I walked through. And this went all through my life and it includes coming to AA. Just before I got here, I had been in a car accident in 71 and they told me I probably
[00:25:04]
wouldn't walk again. God had other plans. And I came out of the hospital, I went back to work, and of course I started drinking again. But after a while, my boss and wife decided I was having a nervous breakdown. So they sent me to a psychiatrist. That wasn't my decision either. I was willing to be crazy, but don't mess with my drinking. I prided myself on my super-honesty and the one time the doctor and I discussed my drinking, I agreed and I gave my word that I would limit my drinking to two drinks a day. Now, the doctor of course was a social drinker, a normal civilian earth person, whatever you want to call him. I understand that to them a drink is an ounce or an ounce and a half of whiskey in a glass with some other foreign liquid and a couple ice cubes. I had that the first night. But before I went back to the man, which was a week later, I had found a mug and one ice cube and my two drinks was a little over a quart of whiskey. That was my two drinks. But I kept my word to him because I stuck to those two drinks. He never asked how much and I wasn't about to tell him. I figured this wimp wouldn't understand me anyway. And that was my attitude. It really, really was. And I was convinced this was being utterly honest. I really thought so. My wife had other ideas. She saw the doctor and my wife's maiden name was Murphy. And I don't know what she said to the man. But when I went into his office, he was sitting at his desk and she came out red in the face and he was pale. And he asked me if my wife was violent. He said she usually pound on desks and I said I don't think so. I had never seen this side. She had just looked at our bank book that was rapidly approaching zero with the psychiatrist bills. And I was drinking more than ever. And she just didn't see how one was helping the other. Or maybe she did.
So she laid down a choice given to me through a psychiatrist, A.A. or get out. And it was winter time. So I went to A.A. I mean, there's no decision involved. There really isn't. And that was November. I went for about six weeks still drinking. When I wasn't drinking, I was popping some kind of pills. And finally I realized this just wasn't working. My sponsor kind of told me it wasn't working. I had gotten a sponsor because everybody says get a sponsor. They said join a group, so I joined a group. I heard people with some long term sobriety introducing themselves as my name is XYZ, I'm a grateful alcoholic. So I said my name is Mike, I'm a grateful alcoholic. And it sounded good. There was still no decision involved. I was a mime. There was no thought behind it. The only thought I had was when I couldn't stop drinking for three days. My sponsor had been all over my case. I kept trying to get him to say get lost, we don't want you. Then I could go back to my wife and say they don't want me. So I kept dredging things up from my past, kind of an early fifth step. And I dropped him on the sky as he was driving me to a meeting. And I thought he's a nice Irish Catholic with five children. He was in a seminary at one point. I've got to be able to shock him. So I dredge all these horrendous things up that I thought were horrendous.
And he'd get to the next red light, he'd turn to me and look at me over his glasses, the school teacher look, which is what he was, and say but Michael why don't you stop drinking? So I thought he was a hard case. But I did try to stop and I just couldn't. I just couldn't do it. I could stop for one or two days with enough pills but I just couldn't. The decision was not mine at that point. It had been taken away from me. Alcohol was making my decisions.
I had nothing to do with it again. I went into a detox and they straightened me out, they took me off pills, they took me off booze. And I came back to AA because I had to, it was January, still cold out. And I was a nice guy who drank too much. And AA was great for you. much, and AA was great for you people, because you were drunk, and I'd keep coming, because
[00:30:01]
I had to, but I really wasn't an alcoholic, and they told me the first drink would get me drunk, so I went out and had two, two civilian kind of drinks in a bar, and they didn't, and I knew I was okay, because you couldn't have one, and I could have two, and I did that for a few months, and I got high one time, first time in years I had been high, I used to go from hungover to drunk, and there was nothing in between, there really wasn't, I hadn't been high in a long, long time, and finally I hit it and I knew I was cured, so I decided two was silly, I could go past there, and I did, and I lost a whole week, blackout drinking was one of my trademarks, and I went back and got detoxed, but this time I came back, I had made a decision, I had discovered that I drank when I didn't want to, and I knew that AA had the answer, and I knew that I needed a commitment to AA, and if I made that commitment, I wouldn't have to drink, I just knew it, from what I had heard over six weeks in my fog, I just knew it, and I made that decision, that I was truly powerless, and that I would devote changing my life really, the way AA told me to, and I came back, first time around somebody had suggested I make coffee, and I looked at him in utter scorn, I was a corporate controller, my shoes were shined, my pants had a crease, I wore a white shirt and tie, and I was not about to make coffee for you, if you wanted coffee, go buy it, I was willing to pay for mine, second time back I was just about to say no again, when I got that look across the room at a business meeting, the over the glasses look, and he wasn't shaking his head yes or no, just a look, those fish eyes, and I said yes, that was a decision, I think half of it was people pleasing, but I made coffee, I made the best coffee Sable ever had, and I really believed that at the time, but it was consistent, it was the start of consistency for me, in a life of sobriety, where I had made this commitment to AA, and whatever AA asked of me, and I was sick enough and needy enough that God threw other jobs my way in AA, I was told to go get speakers as a program chairman, I was told to be treasurer, and each time I got one of these jobs, I'd ask other members of the group what do you do, and they said use your judgment, and I thought oh my God, but it was an old group, and they said you have the authority, we gave it to you, you've got the responsibility, now go exercise it, just tell us what you're doing, we have monthly business meetings and I told them what I was doing, and they said okay, this affected my work life, I discovered I could be a decent employee, I could be a decent boss to the people under me, I discovered I could make decisions, I didn't like to make them, but I could, AA had given this to me, if I say it the right way, the way I think, God gave it to me through AA, when I committed myself to AA, he's given me all kinds of goodies, I believe that God is absolutely crazy about me, or I wouldn't be here, and I have to remember that, and yet I can identify with Judy, when there are days that I'm convinced he doesn't know I exist, I'm just off on my own someplace, and my sponsor used to say if you feel far from God, guess who walked away, he didn't, it's me, I'm wandering off on my own someplace, but that's okay, the 11th step tells me it's okay, there will be times when we can't feel the contact, but keep trying, it comes back, I was fortunate in that I haven't wanted to drink since I experienced the 3rd step, I made that action decision to turn my life and will over to God as I understood him, I haven't desired a drink since, and that's a good while ago, but then I kind of stopped dead, I guess the courage wasn't there for the rest of the steps, and I went into the doldrums for a few years, but AA kept me sober through service, they always had a job for me, and when I was ready so were the people in AA, and the balance of the steps came very easily, I guess the
[00:35:06]
foundation had been there, and today on a daily basis, I don't think I've made a conscious decision not to drink in a long time, I make a conscious decision to ask God to help me to stay sober, but I haven't wanted to drink where I had that decision to make to drink and not, I believe that I gave up that right, that decision is no longer mine, I gave that up with the 3rd step, my life and will are God, I try to remember it, I frequently don't, I led a 7th step meeting about a year ago, and I was thinking I was kind of half depressed at the time, and I said, you know, when I'm really off the wall, I skip a few meals, I don't sleep well for a few days, then I start to get angry at everything around me, and then I pull back from people and withdraw, and I said, you know what, not only are all my character defects still there, they're as strong as if I were drunk, and they looked at me and said, that can't be, I said, oh yeah, I just don't act on a lot of them, that's a decision making I think, to clean up my act, I think it's part of the last 3 steps, my maintenance steps, to try to practice the principles, that's a conscious decision on a daily basis, and to work on one in particular, on a particular day, and to ask God to please help me, because by myself, I usually get worse, if I try to do it on my own, when I go on one of my little ego trips, not only are the temptations worse, but I give into them more, because I'm so convinced that I'm right, nothing dissuades me at that point, and God least of all, I kind of push him on the side, and you know, hold him in reserve for a real emergency, and then I'll tell him how to help me, God might have been born in the mid east, but he does not bargain, at all, when I finally experienced the 7 steps, I was in the middle of the 6th, and my mother had just been informed she had cancer, I wanted desperately to have a relationship with a newcomer, I wanted my wife to let go, because I wanted a separation, the job was all screwed up, and I was in the car driving to a meeting, and I started talking to God, you know, if you do this, then I will do that, I guess this is like a mental habit, you know, and I realized, he's not listening to you dummy, and if he is, he's laughing, because he doesn't make those bargains, and I thought to myself, just give it up Michael, and that was my decision, in the 7th step, you know, it's another, it's a surrender, AA is a series of surrenders, to alcohol, to God, to my character defects in God all over again, and to my humanity, and my decision always has to be to accept, you know, there's so much, so much to accept, and I was talking to somebody I sponsored the other day, and I said, if you don't accept reality, you're not being honest, and if you're not being honest, you can't stay sober, you know, chapter 5 tells me that, it's not a threat, it's a fact, and it's the last thing an alcoholic like me wants to do, and that's stay in reality, and it's a constant decision, I guess I'm still sick, because God has kept me in service, one of my lacks is diplomacy, you know, if I can't have my way, I usually get sarcastic and nasty, and then I go off in a huff with my nose in the air, so he made me chairman of my area, and if nothing else, I guess I'll learn something from it, I've discovered that not only don't they always agree with me, but they frequently even think I'm wrong, and I decide on a daily basis to prove to them I'm not, that's not true, that's not true, I think one of the things that sobriety gives us is the ability to accept when we're wrong, and make a conscious decision to change it, this is the ongoing thing, the
[00:40:07]
journey through life, and the 12 steps for me, that's my road, they define my road, my pathway through life, I get so annoyed with people saying this program, program, program, it sounds like a machine, my first sponsor told me that AA is not a program, it's a fellowship, and the fellowship gives you a way of life, those who don't follow this way of life get drunk, but every day I have to decide, am I going to live sober, not dry, sober, or not, am I going to try, or not, sometimes it's or not, believe it or not, and that I think is our humanity, I think AA's strength from drinking all the way through all our weaknesses and defects is our weakness, and for 50 years we've proved it, the weaklings of the world, the people who couldn't conquer a lousy little ounce of amber fluid, we just about took over Montreal, really, and none of us are drinking, can you imagine this crowd on the slip, I wouldn't like to think of it because then I'd be drinking and there wouldn't be enough for me, but really it's amazing, you know, as a fellowship, what we can accomplish together, thank you.
Michael that was beautiful, and perish the thought about us all going on a trip together to Montreal, it might make the world headlines, last but not least we'd like to call on Fernand to come up, would you please help me welcome Fernand. Good afternoon everybody, I'm Fernand as he already told you, and I just walked the last mile, I think even when I was in the Air Force, walking from the hangar into the cockpit of those aircraft, I had less butterflies than I do now, facing you all, I think it's because you're all sober and I'm sober too, my bravery then was maybe it was a few ounces of liquor, beer, and you know, a bit of put on.
I will start talking with you, or my coserie, if you want to call it a coserie, with a saying that I put in practice, and that was written by Douglas Freeman, he once wrote, life after all contains only one great problem, that of so adjusting yourself to the inevitable, that you can keep your peace of mind and your self-respect, the great victory of life is the conquest of worry, the greatest discovery a man can make is how to escape envy and fear, end of quotation.
Making a daily decision, some of you may think well, how can you apply that, well I do apply it in a way that envy, worry, and fear are enemies to alcoholics, they have helped to a certain extent make some of us alcoholics, fear as a matter of fact has made me an alcoholic, I was, first of all I will tell you that I'm Canadian, French speaking, and long after I had attained sobriety, I had never made any decision. I had three aunts to make them, and I had a grandpappy that used to make them, and my father took my responsibilities, and well, as a matter of fact, I had it all made.
[00:45:10]
It can play a dirty trick on you sometimes. If you want to win a race, you have to get into training. Day, every day, every day, one mile one day, two miles the next, and then you go back to one and two and three. A daily decision is the same. When I first got into AA, I had a friend of mine. I had not seen for a long time, and he came to the same bar, and I saw him. I said, I want your Renee now. I was happy. I said, George, two, please. So George came over, and he had the two gins, and he had my whiskey and soda, and when he looked at me, he says, I don't drink anymore.
We had an argument, and I told him he was sick. He was crazy. That would do him good. I tried to make a decision for him that he should have a drink, and he had already made the decision that he would not have a drink that day. So I took his gin over my scotch because I paid for, and anyway, we carried on. A few weeks or months after, I met Renee again, and he said, have you made up your mind? He said, you have been talking to me a few times that you wanted to stop drinking, and alcohol had made you lose your job, and you had lost your business. Well, they had taken it away from me anyway. I was not going to, well, I think I was going to dilute it into kind of a drinkable affair, but they gave it away to my brother instead.
He never drank. He never smoked. He never went out with women, even if he was in the Air Force Two. He was an outcast. Anyway, he was not one of the crowd. Anyway, he made a success with the business, and me, I carried on. I came close to being a despondent, and I started marrying. Because, you know, that's about the only decision I took then. But my first marriage, my wife died after giving birth to a baby girl, whom I never saw because I was abroad. I was fighting a war for everyone except for myself, and they did not stop the war because my wife was having a baby in Canada.
I came back to a dead child, or buried child, and a sick wife, and she died, and I married a second one, and she died also after a while, and I married a third one, she died, and I'm with my fourth one. Okay, that being said, those were decisions I took, and I think the last decision to marry my fourth wife was the best, after being in AA. For what? Because I must tell you, I had a decision to make after the passing away of my first wife. My present and the first were close friends and schoolmates, and I was asking myself, should I ask Françoise?
Should I court her, or should I stop drinking? See, I have got a great decision to make there. I knew she was against whiskey and liquor and fooling around, and so I thought to myself that maybe it would be a dull life, and I carried on. And I didn't marry her, and I married another one who was an alcoholic. We had a grand time, and we understood one another perfectly. We even thought over, that's your bottle, and that's my bottle. We're making a decision, all right, but a decision not to split.
And she came into AA, and I came into AA also, and for 14 years it lasted. Well, she was sober, and she died sober. The higher power has ways to open up your eyes, to open up your mind. I said that I married four times. I buried three. I have with the fourth one. The three that I buried all left me something to think about.
[00:50:12]
My higher power, whom I call God, left them with me just long enough that they could pass on to me what was good for me at that time, at the time I needed it. And the third one, well, the same, and that third one, I kept her only 32 months. But anyway, she was grand, and she helped me a lot. Making a daily decision to me now, I came to think of it and reason it. I do it every day. It's a daily affair with me when I get up in the morning.
I walk all right today, but three, seven years ago, I was paralyzed on my left side. Sober. And I came through. And day by day, I climb up the ladder, and I'm well now, well enough to be here today. Every day that I wake up and I start moving before I open my eyes in my bed, I thank the Lord that I'm not dead and my limbs are still in action. That's the start of my daily decision. Then I open my eyes and I thank him for giving me, kept me in my eyesight. I can see whether it rains, sunshine or not. And then I pray and I ask him to give me a chance to see me through the day without having to face all kinds of temptation.
And meeting all kinds of character that will get me off my own and get me to drink. Mind you, I don't have the nicest character on the earth. No, no, I get angry easy at nothing. It can get me. Just as Pekka does go through my nose and my… No, no. You're not interested in all the things I'm interested in, especially in politics, unless you can get mad and get on the hosting and learn to tell lies and make promises right and left.
And it stays with you for a while. But in a… I've learned something that we don't have to make promises. We just have to take a decision. We asked the strength or I asked my higher power to give me the strength to keep me alert to all the dangers that I can find on my road during that day and that day only. I try also to thank him at night and to give me the… for what he did for me. I don't always succeed, mind you. I ask him sometimes things that I suppose he figures I don't need.
At the moment I ask him, as somebody said, even if I ask him to drive my car to Quebec tomorrow or the day after, I won't see him sitting next to me and I'll be in the back seat. No, no, no, no. I'll have to do my own driving. And if I don't want to do my own driving, I'll have to hire one to drive for me. But my higher power is not going to do it. I got to remember to take my pills, you know, because I'm a sick man. I'm an old man, I'm a sick man.
He won't take them from me. I got to make a decision to take them at the right time, at the right moment. But I ask him to give me a chance to do that all day. After I lost my business, I lost a few jobs, but finally I got there. The fourth wife said, look, I'm not going to tell you what to do, but if you're not careful, you're going to wake up and you'll have to panhandle for bread and butter or maybe worse.
[00:55:13]
So I decided that I would work and I did work and it gave me a chance to build myself a little pension. Keeps me happy, keeps me in food and clothes, pays the rent, keeps everybody smiling in the house. I have the, my higher power, another thing too, is to try to keep me well balanced because sobriety is not strictly not to drink. There are some people that never drank in their life that, in my view, in my sense, are not sober.
They're not sober in their taste. They're not sober in their action. They're not sober in their desire. They're not sober in the way they spend their money. They're not sober in anything they do. They're spendthrift, I mean, but sobriety to me now, and I think I'm getting there with the help of wife, the higher power. She is part of the higher power, I think. Because she gives me some briefings sometimes and reminds me a few of the things my father used to tell me. He was dead when I married her, but apparently they use the same words differently, but about the same.
Don't do this, don't do that, do this, do that. But, anyway, I, mind you, we, we in AA or alcoholics, who were, I would say, eye strong people. Is that the way I can voice it? We're nervous. We're just like a young colt sometimes, even if the young colt is getting a bit older. But, anyway, we're ready to go through everything and we're ready to attack all kinds of stuff. We never finish it. We finish our glasses, but we don't finish the work we start. I started to design two houses, and I never finished any. I wasn't paid for the work anyway, and I don't blame them.
And all kinds of things that we could talk about, that the third step reminds us, I took a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him. It's a daily affair. It's a daily affair, and myself, I came to a December 1951. That's a long time. Long, long time. I would like to be able to tell you that I kept on sharpened skates all the time, but I think the, I forgot to sharpen them, and I forgot especially to make the daily decision, to pray, to ask.
I forgot that I had to give of what I had received freely, but to give some of it freely. I thought that being aloof, sometimes a little and sometimes very aloof, would get me somewhere, and I could not associate with certain people. Well, I can tell you right here and there now that that brought me to having what you call slips, but if alcoholism is a disease, we'll call it a recurrence. The same, same, same thing, just the word changes. I slipped, and coming back is very hard. I don't suggest that to anybody, and if to be sober, you must have a sincere desire to stop drinking.
If you go back to drink, you develop a sincere desire to drink, because I, for one, will not tell you that. I, for one, will not tell you that I've seen a bottle following me from the liquor store to my place. That's not true. I never seen one of those bottles opening the door of my car or getting itself in the trunk of my car. No, sir.
[01:00:07]
I walked in there and nobody whipped me. I walked freely. And I was very polite with the man when he said, It's $20. I give him the 20. Give me a little change, not too much. And I went home. And I locked myself in. And then I did not want to see nobody. Until the day, finally, somebody came to see me and he said, Look, Why don't you look at yourself in the mirror? And he left me that little thing, the man in the mirror.
And I read it. And I looked at myself. I was unshaven. And I was not praying. I looked like anybody that doesn't take care of himself. So I said, All right, I will try. He said, Why don't you try and ask for help? And he said, Spiritual help. And then you may understand. And he was calling me all kinds of names. Because he was a friend of mine. And he called me an Esobi at times and worse too. And I remember that night I fell on my knees because I remember that if everything trembles in you, the way to stop it was to go down on your hands and knees, on your knees to start with and on your hands.
If you could not stand on your knees and your weight would stop everything from shaking. And I threw my head up in the air and I said, God, please. And I was honest when I asked him that. He gave me a second chance. Gave me two chances that way. Will I get a third one or fourth one? I don't know. I don't think it's worth it. And I will not. As long as daily, every morning, I ask my higher power, whoever he is, wherever he may be, whatever he looks like, whatever his profession is, because he must be a professional by God. He's got so many people to take care of.
I hope he's not a lawyer. Because I don't trust him too much. Asking him to keep us or keep me alert. As I said before, I will repeat myself. It's not so much what I will do, what I will achieve because I will not achieve very much. Providing I can help somebody with the help of my higher power or his higher power or have him come to make a decision to turn his will to a higher power and to come to a meeting and share his experience.
He will do as I did myself. He will change his way of looking at life. He will change his way of looking at things. He will accept. He will be tolerant. He will love people the right way. He will respect his fellow man. He will love them all. He will accept them as they are. And he will do the coffee when he's asked to do the coffee. They don't ask me because I make very, very bad coffee. But I can sweep the floor, though.
And I will… I said before that we prepare a sobriety but we prepare a slip. I will just let you on this note to end. A few years back, I was a traveling salesman. I was one week in Montreal, one week in Quebec City. And another week I was somewhere where I should not have been. And one day I decided that I would be in Montreal
[01:05:01]
but I would not go to a certain place in Montreal because, well, the place was dusty and I had a new suit of clothes and, well, I did not go anyway. I saw some fellows from Skid Row there and… anyway. It took me three days of that state of mind to bring me back to a costly slip. But I came back. And then I accepted them as they were, as I said, saying to myself that maybe I had a clean shirt on because I could pay the laundry.
But inside of me, my tot might have been dirtier than their shirt. They had the will. They had the desire. They had made their decision. And me, I was too weak to make that decision. But now I have friends. I can see one of them in the house. She was there the first night. She came down the stairs to a meeting in Quebec City and I was the second man to greet her. And I think that she has been a few years sobriety and I was there to present her with a cake when it was time.
And I thank you all for hearing me or standing and supporting me. Thank you. Well, this afternoon we've heard three beautiful speakers. I think we've run the whole gamut and it's been beautiful. And I think we should give our speakers another hand, please. I think if there's nothing else, I have nothing to announce now. I would all ask you, if you will, to stand and join with each other in the Lord's Prayer.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Give us this day our daily bread. And lead us always onto the path of life. Thank you so much.