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Source: Various S – Came to Believe – RS 17660 – 1990-07-04.mp3 File: various-s-came-to-believe-rs-17660-1990-07-04.mp3 Duration: 01:18:30
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I call this marathon meeting to order and welcome you to the 1990 International Convention. My name is Dixie and I am an alcoholic. And I'm going to ask Lee W. Oh, wait a minute, before he does that, I have a couple things I need to read. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism.
The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership. We are self-supporting through our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution, does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety.
There may be some of you here who are not familiar with our tradition of personal anonymity at the public level, which states, our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV, and films. Thus, we respectfully ask that no AA speaker or indeed any AA member be identified by full name in published or broadcast reports of our meetings.
The assurance of anonymity is special 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. And I have asked Lee W. from Spokane to read the Promises of Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Lee W. and I'm an addict. The Twelve Promises. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through.
We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That a feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
Self-seeking will will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.
They will all materialize if we work for them. Thank you. Thank you. And I would like to introduce Doris who has graciously agreed to be my speaker this evening. And she will speak for a few minutes and I have people from the audience who will come up and share with us tonight. Thank you, Dixie. Can you hear me? Will you stand on a chair, please? No. Thank you very much, Dixie, for allowing me to be here this morning.
And I am, Doris, a grateful recovering alcoholic. And this is probably the most emotional thing I've experienced for a long, long time. Never will again, probably, just this way. Because if it weren't for this program, I wouldn't be here tonight, this morning, I keep saying, with all of you people all over the world. And it's just, it's awesome, as my grandson would say. The topic is, came to believe, I was told.
Which took me a long time to come to believe. That there was a power greater than myself, whom today I choose to call God.
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I did believe, while I, and during my drinking career, that there was a God, because I was raised in a very strict religion. But today I have a spiritual relationship with my higher power, who is God. Only because of this program, fellowships all over the world, and being there to hear what I need to hear. And what has happened to me would take more than there's time permitted right now to tell you.
But just tonight, over at the Kingdome, I had the opportunity to take a lady in a wheelchair outside of the building to have a cigarette. And I had a cigarette with her. That was a selfish part of it. But in doing so, a gentleman from Nebraska came up and said, I need a hug. And I said, I do too. And with that, he gave me a card that his sponsor had given him. Which on one side says, please God, treat me tomorrow like I treated people today.
That's rather powerful. Maybe not so much for me today, but there are some days I might not do that. And the other one, I'm not going to take the time to read it all, but I will be making these cards up at the printers. I'll get someone to make them up. And for those of you who have your name and address in my book, I will send you a copy of this. It's entitled, God Shows in Your Face. So you know it's a pretty powerful thing.
Then the other one that he gave me says, who says there are no musts in our program? As some of you may know, there are 57 musts in our big book. And they're all listed here with the pages. That too, when I get it copied. If I have your address, name and address, I'll send it to you. And then another person right out here who let me hold, he's a little two week old baby, gave me this card. It says, if you want to drink, that's your business.
If you want to stop drinking, that's my business. And that too, I like and will copy. I'm going blank. That's part of my disease too. But I just really, really am honored to be up here and live here right now. I, for the past three months, have allowed myself to be in a depression. Well, you know, that's the way I am. I have to be backed up into a corner. And I fight until I surrender. And thanks to my higher power and all you people, I'm no longer in that depression.
I'm really, really glad to have you all here, especially at this hour of the morning. It's great to have this many people in the room. Whether you did get an hour of sleep or not, you're here. And, gee, what else? What else? How long do I have? We do have enough people lined up that I'm going to stop. And all I can say is keep coming back. Keep it simple, stupid, as I guess I will say something else.
As my grandson always said when he saw a fallen down truck, as he did in our old Serenity Hall in Seattle here. He is no longer with us. He is one of the statistics. That's the way it is. And it's okay. It's okay. But by the grace of God, we're here today.
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Thank you all for being here for me. Dixie? Thanks, Doris. And I'd like to have our first speaker is Lee W. from Spokane. Is that right, Lee? There you go. This is Lee not here. How about Mike F. from California who was dying to talk? Good morning. Wow. Yeah, it's morning, isn't it? My name's Mike. I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict. How the hell are you? What are we talking about? Come to believe.
Okay. I listened to one meeting on attitudes. Put my name on the list. Didn't get called to speak, so I had an attitude. So what did I do? I said, I will be done. God doesn't want me to talk on this subject. You know? This is where I belong. There's no doubt about it. Everything is exactly the way God wants it to be right now. And I'm not God. And I have to accept that. Come to believe. Wow. Two years ago, I was putting some dirty laundry into my laundry bag in Worcester, Massachusetts, where I got sober, and I was born and raised there.
And I heard a voice say, you'll be moving soon. And I've heard this voice before, and every time I hear it, exactly what it says always happens in my life. I don't try and figure out where that voice comes from. I just know it's real. And if you ever read the book, Come to Believe, you'll see that a lot of people in this program, and I'm sure many in this room, have heard that voice. But anyway, I smoked a cigarette, and I said some prayers, took a little inventory, and said I've got a nice car here, I'm teaching school, everything's cool with my family, I've made my amends.
All I'm doing is waiting for God to drop a woman into my lap so I can exercise my character defect of lust for a while. Some of the things I pray for just don't come true. I can't understand why. It's probably because I'm not ready. Exactly. I've got to be careful what I pray for. This is true. But I can honestly say, I started drinking at age 13. And by the time I was 16, I was a full-blown alcoholic.
I lived to drink. And I also started smoking marijuana and LSD. I grew up in the 60s, I'm a child of the 60s, and now I'm a child of God. In my life, I've done 46 different drugs. And I've been in jail three times, been in 36 fights, OD'd twice, and I'm not even going to get into the relationships that I've had with the opposite sex. When I was 19, I was drafted and I was sent to Vietnam. Why? Because I dropped out of college. Why did I drop out of college?
Because I was drinking, I didn't go to class. I was drinking and drugging. Everything in my life, my whole life was consumed by one thing, the desire to drink and drug. To get loaded and get high. You know, I've done a lot of inventories and I've boiled it all down to a very simple thing. That my will was basically to have as much pleasure and ecstasy as I could as a result of drinking, drugging, and sex without any pain or responsibility at all.
That's the way I lived. And I lived that way for 22 years. When I was 19, I was drafted, they sent me to Vietnam. And when I was over there, I was over there for 359 days. And out of that 359 days, there was three days that I didn't drink and drug. I became addicted to opium, liquid methadrine, booze. I washed everything down with booze. Booze to me was like water. You know, you just drink it. I mean, where is it?
Get it, let's get it, drink it, and so forth. I mean, you know, second nature. It was just a part of me, you know. And I was always under the influence, always. And I remember over there that we were in a firefight. And when it was over, there was a lot of carnage. And a helicopter landed, and the helicopter had a Catholic chaplain, a priest, get off, a colonel. And he came over, and he had this purple thing hanging around his neck, and he had his helmet on, and he was giving us a blessing.
And I said, what are you doing? He said, I'm giving you battlefield absolution. New Battlefield Absolution. And I looked at him and I said, how the hell can you come
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here and talk about God? Look around you. Don't you realize what the fuck we're doing here? And he kept doing what he was doing. So I raised my rifle up and I was going to blow his brains to kingdom come. And I looked right at that white cross and I was going to put a bullet straight through that. And my men pulled me off this guy. And they took my rifle away. And he kept doing his little Latin incantation. And I was going to go out after him with a knife. And my men pulled me off him again. And from that moment on, I had no belief in God whatsoever. None. I became a total atheist and I became filled with hate and rage. And the only thing that cut that hate and rage and that fear underneath it all and that pain, that insidious, shameful pain of just being was booze and drugs. I was addicted before I went over there to booze and drugs. And then when I came home, I got off the plane down in San Francisco. I went to a liquor store and I went to a corner and bought some acid and some dope. And I stayed that way. That's how I functioned.
You know, I've been up and down. You know, I became a drug dealer. I mean, you name it. I could tell you ragtime stories till they come out of your ears and my ears. But I'm here to talk about the solution that's provided by the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, which saved my life. I ended up in a VA hospital and I was in a bed and I was in withdrawals for two or three days. And for those of you who haven't been there yet, if you go out and pick up a drink or a drug, I guarantee you'll get there. And I hope you don't. If you're sitting here now, you don't ever have to have a drink or a drug again. You know, you don't ever have to do it.
Just stay with us. We're a family and all we offer is unconditional love. Every time, all the time, no matter what, wherever you are, there's an AA meeting. You know, and we run on love. The love comes from people and people are, we're God's children and God speaks through people, you know. But anyway, I was in that hospital bed and I came out of the horrors and I knew if I drank, I was going to die. And I still wanted to drink. And I get out of the hospital bed and I went over and I tried to open up the window and I didn't have the physical strength to open that window. And I collapsed on the bed. And I started sobbing. And I was in physical, mental and spiritual agony. And all of a sudden I started, I said a prayer. It was the first prayer I'd said since Vietnam. And I said, if there's anything out there, take me now because I want to die. That's what I said. Just like that. And all of a sudden I experienced falling as if I was falling through space, through the bed, through the floor, through the universe. I didn't have the power to even open my eyes to try and stop that. I had no willpower left within me to fight anything. And I hit bottom when I fell. And all of a sudden I had this tingling sensation in my body. And in a split second I went into ecstasy or bliss or whatever you want to call it. I call it the grace of God.
And I jumped out of that bed and I ran up and down that hospital corridor shouting out the name of my higher power. And they thought that somehow, someway I got my hands on some drugs or something in that hospital and I was drunk or high. And the reality was I was drunk on the grace of God. God had touched me. I believe to this day that God, my God, my higher power has a tremendous sense of humor. Here I was a guy that didn't believe in anything except booze and drugs and my own will.
Anybody or anything that got in my way and tried to stop me or prevent me from doing what I wanted to do to satisfy my own selfish, self-centered ends, which was to drink and drug and have as much fun and pleasure as possible every day, all the time, no matter what, I would hurt them. And I have many, many, many ways to hurt people. Many ways. I spent all my thinking and all my drinking trying to think of how to get the money to get the next drink and the next drug. The desire and obsession for a drink within me was more powerful than my mind or my will and I could not see it.
I did not know that I didn't know. And everything was everybody else's fault. It was never my fault. But anyway, I, they took a blood test. When they took the blood test, I was laughing. I was hysterical with joy and tears were streaming down my face. I was in a state of ecstasy that if I took everything in my life that felt good or was pleasurable or ecstatic and put it all together, you could compare it to a teaspoon, take all that and put it in a teaspoon. And what I felt inside
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me was greater than anything on this earth, greater than anything, greater than the oceans all put together. I came to believe in an instant and I firmly believe also that I wouldn't listen to any other human being on this planet. And that was the only way that God could get to me. And my God is merciful, kind, just, compassionate, understanding, loving, and sweet. My God is sweet. There have been moments in my many, many, many moments of my sobriety and always at an AA meeting where that sweetness comes within me in my heart. And that's what I live for today. That's what I get high on. I get high on the spiritual grace of God. Whereas before I try to get high on alcohol and drugs. It was a false ecstasy and it was a false God and it failed me. I came to believe in an instant and my life today, the promises have come true. God is doing for me what I cannot do for myself. I didn't have a drink or a drug today. I had food today. I had people to be around that I could share with and who shared with me, who gave me their love and I could give me their love. And that is all that's important in this life. Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks a lot, Mike. And now I'd like to hear from Vidinya W. from California. I'm Virginia and I'm an alcoholic. Neat to be here. When I'm sitting here and I'm listening to all the different subjects and topics, you know, I want to talk about all of them. You know, there's not just any of them I want to talk about. It's just, I feel like, well, I've been there. I've been this one and I've been that one. And it's just like watching Oprah, Renfrew, I've been all those things, all them people and all them situations that she's had on her program, I've been in there. And when they was talking about the perfect a while ago, wanting to be perfect or didn't want to be perfect, you know, I'm the type of person, I want everything in my life perfect. You know, I want that little house that you don't have to dust. I want the dog that don't poo-poo on the lawn. I want the car that you don't have to put gas in.
You know, I don't want any problems. I don't want any ripples. You know, I just, if it's running smooth, I'm okay. But if there's any ripples, then I, I don't like that. And I don't find a lot of people in AA that feel that way, but you know, we're all different. We all come for different reasons and stuff. The first time that I came to believe, it was slapped right in my face. I was sitting in jail and I was thinking, I don't belong here. And God just slapped me in the face and said, if you didn't belong here, you wouldn't be here. And that's the first time in my life that I ever realized that I had to be responsible for Virginia and be responsible for my own actions because I had never been responsible for anything in my life up to that day. When I came into this program and the pre-emblem that you read saying I am responsible in this, I had a real hard time reading that because I wasn't responsible. I was playing jacks once with my son. He was 13 and we were sitting there playing jacks and he said something to me that I had said to someone when I was his age and I looked at him and I thought, my God, I'm a mother. And hell, I'd already had three kids. But I didn't, you know, I just wasn't responsible, you know. I was one of the kids right along with them. And I didn't get, I haven't grown up until I got in this program, I started growing up. And I had to start realizing that there is people out here just like I am. You know, I didn't know that everybody else felt unloved and unwanted and all those different feelings, I thought I was the only one. And the feelings that I had when I was
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growing up, the only time my dad ever gave me any love was when he was drinking. And he's not an alcoholic, I'm an alcoholic. But I never felt that until then. And I had a hard time in this program trying to deal with who I was and I've always been waiting for Virginia to run into Virginia. And I'm getting close, like somebody said in this program, they were getting close. And you know, I am getting close, I am liking me today.
A couple things have happened in my life and just last month, I was going on my 10 year AA birthday and I was going to come in to my birthday and tell them that I was going to drink in July, at the end of July. You know, I told them I was going to come to this convention and everything else and celebrate my birthday because I was, you know, 10 years sober. But I told them I was going to drink as soon as the end of this month.
And God has shown me from that time of thinking all these things that no matter how many years I've been sober or how many years if you just come in and just sober for a day, it doesn't matter how long you're in this program, we do it one day at a time because we all have the thoughts. And if we don't have a foundation underneath us to keep us from going out there and just doing it, we're going to do it. And I thank God and I thank this program for giving me the foundation because if I hadn't had it, I would be drinking at the end of this month.
And today I don't have to do that. God showed me that I don't have to drink to get the feelings that I want to have. Like I was saying, I never had a close relationship with my folks, but it wasn't because of them, it was because of me. I walked away from them. And the same with God, you know, God didn't lose the relationship he had for me. And I walked away from God. And he allowed me to do that. He gave me the choice to do what I wanted to do.
And I walked away from him and did my own thing. And I had to drink and I had to get loaded and I had to get sick and I had to get tired. You know, I came in this program unmanageable, you know, the second half of our first step. My life was unmanageable, you know, and today it's not unmanageable. Today I've got a little bit of control of my life because I'm doing the footwork that God wants me to do. I have to tell you the reason that I wanted to go drink is because I'm going fishing with my father and I haven't gone fishing with him since I was a little girl.
And when I was a little girl and they were drinking and partying with their friends and my brothers had, you know, there was two brothers so they had each other to do their own thing and I didn't have anybody because, you know, I was the only little girl and didn't have nobody to play with or nothing. And I always wanted to be that adult and drink with my mom, dad and their folks. So now here I am so many years later and I get a chance to go do that and I was thinking, well, I'm a grown up now, I'm going to go drink with them and it was my choice.
And that's the thought I had in my mind until that Friday before my birthday and I panicked and I started panicking because I've not in this program felt that strongly about wanting to go get a drink or even made the decision in my mind that's what I was going to do. And I talked to my ex-sponsor, I talked to her for three hours on the phone and I realized through her that God was talking to me, telling me that the feeling that I wanted when I was a child with my parents, I have been having this last year because of being sober and I've been having those feelings and I haven't had to drink. But I had to go through all that pain and all that hurt to be able to realize that.
And that's what this program has given me. It's given me a choice and it's given me the tools to be able to walk through all the problems that I've got. And it doesn't matter what problems or what feeling or what emotion it is, I have to walk through it before it's going to be gone and the pain's not going to be that rough anymore. Because I'm always going to… thoughts and they're going to run through my mind but it's what I do with those feelings
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and what I do with those thoughts is what counts and this program has taught me and gave me the tools to know what to do with them and I'm so grateful for being in this conference and I walked out of that great big dome a while ago and forgave a couple people in my life that I didn't even know that I had resentment and it seems like every time I think I'm doing okay, God throws something in there to remind me, hey, there's another part in your life you're going to have to deal with now, you're already through one of them, you've already walked through one door, here's another one and he's going to do that the rest of my entire life and if I can hang in this program and work my steps, I'll be able to walk through all the feelings that I have because the feelings are what keeps me sober and it's the feelings that's going to get me drunk someday if I don't work these steps and use this program. Thank you.
Thank you Virginia, I can relate to a lot of what you had to say and next I'd like to, let's see, who is it, Bev from British Columbia, I'm a tall one, my name is Bev and I'm an alcoholic and when I asked her what the topic was, I got really excited because spirituality is a very important part of my program, it is the end all and then when I heard the twelve promises being read at the beginning of the meeting, up in my hometown, Maple Ridge, not too often do they speak of the promises but I cling to one part of the promises that talks about spiritual freedom. As I grew up, I was brought up in a very strict brethren home, you didn't do nothing but breathe what I was told to breathe. I was classified as one of the bottom ones in the chart, the father was first and so on down the line so I was near the bottom as I understood it. So I had a major resentment against God for putting people above me in my own home and I got into the religion for a little while. I don't knock religion but I know for me it was, I was searching and I couldn't find nothing there. I realize today it's because I packed the bottle with me to the church. They kicked me out of the church at a very young age for getting the youth group pissed all the time. I was not, I figured that was the end eh, I was kicked out of a church so I had nowhere else to go. So out of no fear of God because I became my own God, I started to believe that I was an atheist and that would kill me and that's what I wanted to believe was that I was going to die a drunk and I was going to die on the back of a bike with a bottle in my hand and I didn't have a problem with that. The last ounce of sanity that I had was a year and a half ago when I got sick and tired of fighting this road to death in my eyes. I still, I still can't believe the miracles that have happened already in a year and a half in my life and the lives around me. I woke up one morning, had two drinks of courage and went and asked a friend who I had known for five years. She was in
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the program for five years and I'd known her, I'd been to her three year cake and I don't even remember it but I went to her and I asked her for help and I went to a meeting. I didn't hear nothing at that meeting but the next day I went to another meeting and then I got sick and I thought it was the flu. I had no idea that there was such a thing as detox, detoxification. I had no idea that my body was reacting to what I had done to it. I started on Pink Cloud but it only, I guess it lasted four or five months and I was playing Russian Roulette a lot through the program too. I came in with an attitude that all I had to do was not drink. So I'd go to meetings and then I'd go to the bar afterwards and I wouldn't drink. After four months of playing Russian Roulette and pulling the trigger and knowing that that was the last chance I had and if I let that trigger go it was going to blow me away and I was going to lose what little sobriety I had, I walked out of the bar and swore I'd never go back. Then I started to realize that I had to reach out and ask for help and knock my attitude because I came in with an FU attitude that I was only here to get dry and put the cork in the bottle. I've learned since then that that's not all I want. I went into detox at nine months sober and I really could relate to that man that talked about a sense of humor for a higher power. When I entered the treatment center that I was going into, it was a do or die for me either I was going to find some sort of an answer there or I was going to die because I was suicidal at nine months sober and I didn't tell anyone. I didn't talk about the real gut feelings of where I was coming from and I still have a hard time with that but I'm just a baby and I understand that and I know it's in time. When I walked into the treatment center I thought I was dead serious. I started joking around, kidding around but I thought I was dead serious. A few days into that they were gonna plan on kicking me out. I was really suicidal at that point. I went to see the doctor and the doctor told me that at my age of 23 years old he had never seen such a shot liver in his life at such a young age and that scared the royal shit out of me and I couldn't believe it and I guess it had to show me physically what I had done to myself and then the mental part came and the emotional part came of the damages that I've done to myself. But you know my higher power had a hell of a sense of humor and he could only get to me through manure and I'm not joking. I said one night in treatment I says you know after doing my step one in treatment I says a truck should come along and take my shit out of here. The next morning a truck showed up with a whole truckload of manure dumped it outside and took my shit away and that to me was my higher power telling me that he was looking after me and I I couldn't I that was a simple of a concept for me for a higher power and that is my spiritual awakening for me. I understand it it's simple for me and I know that that's a miracle that that would happen after what I had said the night before that that would happen. I believe in a power greater than myself I choose to call him my higher power my HP sauce. I believe he is within me and I believe that when I open my heart and ask him to do his will and not mine to the best of my ability opening up as much of a channel as I possibly can at such a young age in this program he has given me that over and over again where he's opened me opened up my heart and just I can't believe how much of a marshmallow I've become in the year and a half that I've been around here. I am truly grateful for the fact that I have a year and a half one day at a time I say that and I remind myself how much time I have because that was the beginning of my life I've only just begun just for today and the spirituality of believing in a higher power has
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saved me I saved my butt and I know he's shaking the bullshit out of me right now because I'm shaking like crazy I know that if someone had told me I had to believe in God I don't think I would have stuck around somebody had told me that you have to do this or have to do that I don't think I would have stuck around all they said to me was keep coming back it gets better and if you don't like the word God put another O in it and make it good and that has really helped me in my program this to me is a miracle that I am sitting in a hotel and I'm using cloth napkins that just blows me away but anyways from where I come from it blows me away I just dirty them I just for the sake of dirtying them I can't believe that these people are giving me like glasses and and I don't know how they ever gave me in the bar was plastic stuff because every time I got a hold something that was glass it was broken this is a miracle to me and every time I walk down the street and I see all these different people and I see that every person from a different country from wherever talks about the same stuff that I've gone through and I can really relate to you I can't possibly imagine that going through the phones or whatever it goes through the heart from what I understand and I'd just like to thank you all for sharing your higher powers with me to teach me about mine thank you and now how about Pat G from Illinois morning my name is Pat Glynn I'm from Chicago Illinois my home group is the South End Illinois Club in Blue Island and uh this is all new to me it's the greatest thing that's ever happened in my entire life for those of you that may have been in that dome this evening and listen to that lady speak I have a brown dress I don't want to be anybody else but me I don't want to be anywhere else but here I've never felt that way before I always wanted to be somebody else I always wanted to have something else I never wanted to be me I never felt right I never felt even close to complete right now my life is complete right now it's complete I don't know why I don't care I just know I feel great and that's all I need I never felt this way that lady reminded me of that I didn't know that I listened to her and I found that out I just know that I'm here in Seattle I no longer have an obsession to drink or drug I think I know why I took a suggestion to to ask for help from God and I did I came to this fellowship through prayer of my own I feel I I got to the point where my life was at a dead end I had nothing really much more to live for in my own mind suicide was really not on the menu that I was looking at however through through drinking and drugging I was committing suicide not even knowing
[00:45:01]
my job, everything that I thought I had was gone, or I was, I didn't want anymore, I didn't want anything, I don't know what, what was happening, but I began to feel a tremendous amount of pain, gut-wrenching pain in my stomach on a daily basis, and I didn't like what I was feeling, and I wanted to know why, so I had to figure out why, and it didn't take long to just take a look around and realize that all my problems, and all the things that were wrong in my life, directly related to the use of alcohol or drugs, the fact that I quit my job, the fact that I no longer wanted to be around my family, I no longer wanted to be around drinking and drugging people, I just wanted an isolated home and use, I no longer wanted to do anything, I didn't even want to commit suicide, I just didn't want to do anything, I sat on the couch and watched TV, life was boring, it was not one of these, my bottom was not any great long series of events, it maybe lasted a month for me, but it was enough for me because my pain threshold was not very much. I had heard of AA and knew nothing about it, but I had heard of it. I felt terrible inside, and I knew it was because I was an alcoholic, maybe, I don't know, but I came to find out, and I only had to be at about 15 minutes of the meeting to find out that I was, because I understood what the people were talking about, and I had a day prior to that, a Murphy's Law day, I had quit my job for about 6 weeks, I was out of work, I had never been out of work for 15 years, I just quit, it was cold out, I didn't want to work outside anymore.
My attitude was terrible, I was totally disillusioned. After being out of work for 6 months, I was at a friend of mine's house, a close friend of mine, and a significant other, I guess, and I chose to not want to talk to that person anymore, and I wanted to erase that person from my life. In driving home from that morning, my car went flying off the road at an expressway, I had a seatbelt on, and lived through it. I wasn't drinking or drugging, but nonetheless the car was totaled, and I got home, and the insurance agent in front of my house informed me that my insurance payment was 3 days late, and I was about to eat a $15,000 car, so I wasn't real happy that day. So I needed to erase that pain through the use of drugs and alcohol for a month, and that allowed my particular disease to really get rolling, to the point where I could see that I was very sick, and I thank God for that, because it happened real fast, so I didn't have to live through a lot of that horror of addiction. After a month of that, I had had enough, but I didn't know what to do. I just knew that I didn't feel good, so I got down on my knees in my living room, and I prayed. I asked God for help. I don't know what I said, but I know I did it, and I cried. I probably hadn't prayed in 20 years. I don't know if I ever prayed, because prayer to me now has meaning. The only prayers I knew were words. I meant this. Sincerely, I asked for help. Nobody told me to do it. Nobody suggested it to me. I just did it, and three days later, I was sitting in front of a phone book that led me to this fellowship. I picked up the phone and made a call and asked where the meetings were. I got to a meeting, and I listened to what
[00:50:03]
they had to offer. I had a stack of self-help books, and I'm not exaggerating that high on my table. I wanted to change my attitude. I didn't know how. I thought those books were the answer. They weren't. You people are. The first thing they told me was that I have to admit that I'm powerless over alcohol and that my life had become unmanageable. No problem. I admit that. I surrender. The war is over. What's next? Come to believe that a higher power could restore me to sanity? Power greater than myself? I believe in God.
I came to believe. After one week, a lot of material things came back to me. One week, new car, drew four job offers. I could sleep at night. There was no more stress. There was no more pain, gut-wrenching pain. I felt good. I had hope. I was a new person. Things started happening real fast. I had no problem believing that it was not a coincidence. When certain people, I guess you choose to hold more belief in what they say. My mother is one of them. She called me after one week, and she said, someone is looking over you.
I said, I think so too. I came to believe. Since then, my life has gotten better, a lot better. Things have happened to me that I would never have dreamed possible. I'm standing here right now, and I got the feeling now that I don't want to be anybody else. I never had that feeling. There was a huge void inside me that I carried through my whole life. I never felt right. I feel right now, complete. I don't know why, but I happen to think that God has something to do with it. I asked my sponsor when I first got in this program, why did I, why if there's a God do I go through this if it's a loving and caring God? He said, because you turned your back on him, and all you have to do is ask him for help, and he'll give it to you. So I did, and he does every day, every single day. I'm afraid to not pray now. I have to. I know that God keeps me, keeps me relieved of the obsession of alcohol that I once had, and drugs. I no longer have it. I know that that's not something that can be taught. The ABCs can be taught, but they taught me ABCs here. It says, I was alcoholic and could not manage my own life. No human power could have relieved my alcoholism. God could and what if he were sought? I know that today, and God's relieved me of that. However, I had the opportunity to, once I was relieved of this alcoholism, to learn to live and enjoy life, and that's what the fellowship is about to me. That's what the meetings are for, to learn how to live. I was just told last weekend that my recovery is to be enjoyed, not endured, and I'm here to enjoy it, and I am, every living moment. I've never felt anything close to this in my life. They haven't printed enough money to buy this feeling. This is not a honeymoon.
This is not a pink cloud. This is me. This is the way I feel, and I intend on feeling this way if I want to. This too shall pass, but it doesn't have to. It doesn't have to. It can stay this way. It has, and I have something that I don't ever want to lose, enthusiasm. I am going to pray to keep it because I found out that that's the kind of sobriety I want. I found out I can have any kind of sobriety I want too. I'm learning. I'm learning one day at a time. The fact of the matter is I don't know shit about shit, so I'm going to shut up. Thank you.
[00:55:04]
Thank you, Pat, and now I'd like to ask Franz to come up from New York. Is he still here? Good morning. I'm an alcoholic. My name is Franz Heldwein. My home group is the Tennessee Valley Group of Alcoholics Anonymous in Rochester, New York. As you can hear by my accent, I suppose, I'm not originally from upstate New York. I'm from Vienna, Austria. One of the geographical cures, I drank a lot, I traveled a lot, came to Rochester, sobered, and stayed. And I want to share with you a little bit about myself, how I came to believe.
Now, the time came when I found myself in my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't plan on being there. I was scared to death, and I did not know what to expect. But the one thing, and probably the last thing, that I knew is that I did not have an alternative. I'm also one of those guys who can remember, as long as I think back, that I walked around in the face of this earth in psychic pain, awful psychic pain, that nothing was right.
I was always too tall, too short, too smart, too dumb, too early, too late. And it just wasn't right. I heard it once expressed this way, that it almost seemed to me that all of you knew what page of life you were on. And I was frantically going through the book, trying to figure out where you were. And the only way that I could stand the pain of living is alcohol. And I drank, and I could be somebody, and I could be things, I could feel things, or think I could feel things that you felt when I drank, and be part of, instead of being a part of you. And I crossed the magic line, and I couldn't stop if I wanted to. And that's my drunkologue. Now, my frame of mind that I found myself with in this meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous is probably 180, let's say 175 degrees of what it is tonight. Now, I don't think this is just a mere convention. I think this is a celebration of life. And when I walked in the registration area, when I first arrived, I started to cry. Because I saw the miracle, how unlikely it was for a person like me to make the journey from where I started to today.
Now, it didn't come easy. I am not one of those people who had a spiritual awakening, who woke up and their personality was shifted and displaced. I worked for it, but I didn't know it at the time. And when the topic is coming to belief, it means more, more than spirituality, although this is the end effect. And all of the revelations along the line are ultimately the way to spirituality and the faith and trust and love in my higher power. I remember probably two or three weeks after I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, you see, I'm a sick person, but I'm not stupid.
At this particular meeting, there were the 12 steps and the 12 traditions. And I could figure out without knowing too much about the program that if I could only do a fraction, only do a fraction of what is contained in these 12 steps, that I'll never have to worry about anything in my life. I'll never have to be concerned about being alone, about being unwanted, about feeling inadequate, about being poor, unemployed, because everything is in there.
You see, if I can do just a fraction of that, I thought, people will want to be around me, because I'll be safe. I won't have to be right all the time. I won't have to judge. I won't have to condemn. I will keep my commitments. I will do the things that I say, and I will live and let live. And I could understand that probably two or three weeks, but I also understood that, well… …but I also understood that, well, it might work for you, but certainly not for me.
Because my frame of mind then was, what's the sense of it all? We'll all die in thermonuclear war.
[01:00:01]
And that was pretty much the story of my life. I want to tell you a little bit about the awful despair that I felt, because I didn't know what was going on. I did not know what was going on. Because when I look back at my life, I could not remember at one time getting up in the morning and saying, today I'm going to hurt myself, today I'm going to hurt somebody else. On the contrary, I woke up in the morning and said, I'm going to go out there and do my level-headed best today.
Or at the very worst I'd say, today we're going to keep the status quo and try not to call attention to ourselves. But somehow, magically, it all turned gray, and I did not know why. And those of you who know, know the despair and the hopelessness and the confusion and the pain that I'm talking about. So this was my starting point. I don't want to second-guess the wisdom of my higher power, but I don't think I would be standing here before you tonight if I didn't have a sponsor early on.
Now, I didn't have the skill to reach out and ask for help. Somebody got up at the end of one of my early meetings, came over, introduced himself and said, you're hurting, you want to talk? And he became my first sponsor. And he explained certain things to me, and he made me aware, yes, that the steps are here and that sooner or later I would have to get involved. But he said this to me, he said, Franz, look it, treat this like an experiment.
Give it a period of time, let's say six months. If after the end of six months of going to meetings and doing the things that are suggested and asked of you, if your life is not appreciable better, go back to your old one, you haven't lost anything. I couldn't argue with his logic, and I tried it and I stayed. Now, I don't know why I stayed, because I, of all people, know what I did or didn't do in this program, how I worked for it, and how I didn't work.
And it seems to me, in retrospect, that compared to what I got out of it, I put darn little into it. But I suppose these are the rewards. Now, first, I came to believe that it was possible to live without alcohol. Now, I did not believe that it was enjoyable. I believed that life without alcohol was to be endured and certainly not to be celebrated, as we're doing here this weekend. The second thing I came to believe is that Alcoholics Anonymous is more than just not drinking, that there's a whole wealth of French benefits in it.
You see, I'm one of those guys who grew up having a set of information that I somehow acquired about life, and that I went to great lengths to defend. Now, I never knew anything about marriage, all I knew is I didn't want what my parents had, but nobody ever taught me about marriage. And the first thing my sponsor said to me, said, If you want a fighting chance at your marriage or any other relationship, human relationship around you, from here on out forward, these are the three things that I strongly suggest you practice.
Number one, don't tell her what's wrong with her. Don't talk about the past. And if there's any kind of disagreement, physically remove yourself. Now, not drinking, in retrospect, was easy compared to that. But you see, again, I had no alternative because I proved over 33 years of my life that my ways didn't work very well, and I was ready to try anything to stop this pain. And that was the second thing that I came to believe in Alcoholics Anonymous, that by doing the things that were suggested, I got exactly what I wanted in the first place.
And so I slowly but surely started to allow for the possibility that I might not have the right answers. And I think this is what kept me from trying other things that ultimately would have pushed me away. The next thing that I came to believe is that it is not offensive if somebody laughs in a meeting. You see, I was so serious, there was nothing to laugh about anymore. I had no sense of humor. I was deathly offended if you guys would laugh in meetings.
There's nothing funny about this. This is terribly tragic. But then I said, well, maybe a little bit. That was the next thing. And so on and on and on and on. And ultimately, I was confronted with the decision of a higher power.
[01:05:03]
And I wrestled with it and I wrestled with it and I wrestled with it. And again, it was almost like somebody wanted to provide me with the evidence of his existence. All I had to do is be quiet for a while and look, and I found it around me. A friend of mine calls it the conspiracy of coincidences that started happening. Another one says, miracles? I don't rely on miracles. I depend on them. And I started to see forces and things working in my life that I could not explain with my rational, intellectual mind.
And again, I started to allow for the possibility that maybe there was a higher power after all. And as time went on, I got involved in working with others. And I started to understand that the information that I acquired about religion and God was probably not the right one for me. That God does not talk after the clouds part to me, but he talks to me through other people. And I saw, after I'd been around for a while, the miracle in the eyes of newcomers as they changed and they cleared up and they smiled.
And through those, I could see myself. And so I came to believe that indeed, yes, there was a God. I started to get involved in the aspects of recovery to learn more about it because I'm interested in it. I started to understand the transition that the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous allow me to make from shame to guilt to reparation to a well-functioning ego and ultimately to egolessness. And I'm starting to understand and came to believe that what Alcoholics Anonymous means for me is this.
And I don't have the universal truth, but this is what it means for me. It's that it's not about drinking or not drinking alone. It's not about spirituality or not spirituality alone. It's not about the 12 steps or not the 12 steps alone. It's not about a sponsor or not a sponsor alone. It's not about work or not work. Money, not money. Marriage, not marriage. Income taxes, jobs, homes. What it is, it's a balance of all of it.
What I want to figure out is how does an adult, how does an adult do all those things reasonably happy? How does an adult keep the balance between meetings, sponsor, sponsoring other people, having quiet time, being a productive citizen of society and keeping all of this in perspective? And it's starting to dawn on me that that is a process that will keep me around probably for as long as I'm graced to remember that I'm alcoholic.
Thank you. Thank you and I'd like to ask Valentin from Chicago also and he's going to be our last speaker. And I did see Bill who is going to be the next secretary who's from our home group, my home group in Edmonds. And that meeting starts at 4.30. Thanks. Well, the topic is came to believe, okay? I'm Valentin, powerless over alcohol. The reason I come out that way in Alcoholics Anonymous with the word powerless emphasized the way it is emphasized is because about ten years ago I was still bouncing in and out of this Alcoholics Anonymous program.
And what happened for me was during the year 1980, my bouncing in and out year, I got myself two sponsors in Alcoholics Anonymous. One a short and a mean guy and one a tall and a gentle guy called the odd couple of sponsorship in Alcoholics Anonymous. And what had happened for me was upon my first real attempt to enter Alcoholics Anonymous after battling it for one year,
[01:10:15]
the short and the mean dude and this tall gentle guy cornered me at 12 Step House in Chicago, Illinois. And they asked me one thing. The short and the mean guy was on me, see? He had me cornered. I couldn't move. He asked me one thing and one thing only. Valentin, are you finally powerless over alcohol with that exact physical emphasis in his voice? And to this date, I do not forget that question. And I lived that question when I introduced myself.
I'm Valentin Schneider, powerless over alcohol. And when he asked me that question, it came out of my mouth that yes, I believe this to be a fact of my life. And that is why I am here. And then he pulled back because the situation was tense and tight. See, I didn't know if he was going to beat the hell out of me or, you know, I didn't know AA procedures. I thought, well, maybe you hit bottom, you're going to get beat up or what? I didn't know nothing.
So the situation is tense, so he pulls back and that forces me to ease up because in him easing up, I ease up. You know, I forgot my street rules there, see? Even if they ease up, do not ease up. And so what happened was the short and the mean dude hit me with the statement that has saved my life ever since. In the meetings, in the court of last resort for us alcoholics anonymous. He said to me, Valentin, if you want to make it, damn it, get tough on yourself.
With that exact emphasis again, I remember like it was yesterday, see? And ever since then I've been, I guess, getting even with him because I come out like a monster bat out of hell in Alcoholics Anonymous. And they told me, you got a big mouth, right? Okay, I can agree to that. Then he says, whenever you make a comment in an AA meeting, I want you to do yourself and everybody around you a favor. When you speak, project your voice to that dead, to the farthest corner of the meeting.
Even if you say something stupid in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, you might be saving someone's ass. And you're capable of saying some mighty stupid stuff. And this is the kind of sponsorship and caring that has come about in my life that made me come to believe in Alcoholics Anonymous. This is my second international convention. I'm coming up 10 years. And yes, I looked at the date, ego, ego. On November 10, a Saturday of this year.
And I'm only 30 years old. I have now been in Alcoholics Anonymous one third of my life. One third! It's amazing to me what can happen to you. When I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, including having a big mouth and a foul mouth with a lot of curse words coming out of it, what
[01:15:07]
happened for me was I wore rack shirts, I wore jeans, and the knees in my jeans had holes in them, because I'm clumsy and that's the way I've always been, except the things I cannot change, period. And I've tried anyways. And that's how I dressed when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous. Now look at it! The only time you son of a bitches would ever see me in a suit and a tie are twice in your lifetime. When you marry me and when you bury me, after that, screw you. That was my attitude. And now I got a wardrobe beyond a wardrobe and I don't know, I get off on the glory of conventions, Alcatons, speaking, caring, bitching about everything that's wrong, and I don't know. See, when I get angry and tense and bitchy, I just gotta let it all out, or I'll just stay miserable.
Uh oh, I'm getting corrected. Okay, the way I get out of myself is through just attempting to go on with life despite problems. Forge ahead in Alcoholics Anonymous. When you come to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, leave your problems outside the door for an hour and see how you feel after you're over with that meeting. Thank you. Well, if you were asleep, you're awake now. I want to thank you for letting me be secretary and my home group is Edmonds, Washington, which is 20 minutes north, right on the beach, on our next, yeah, we love it. Great sunsets. And, um, now I'd like to close with, um, what?
The serenity prayer, I can't. I'm too tired. It's good. It's alright. You can lead it, I'm too tired. Can we reach your hand over? Why don't you, why don't you, why don't you lead it? 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. Keep coming back, it works, it works. That concludes our program, thanks for listening.