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Source: 1990 Seattle International Convention – Unknown Speaker – FREEDOM TO CHOOSE – RS 17647.mp3 File: 1990-seattle-international-convention-unknown-speaker-freedom-to-choose-rs-17647.mp3 Duration: 01:24:09
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Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon and Alateen presents its international convention, 55 years, one day at a time, July 5th through the 8th, 1990, in Seattle, Washington. Where else to go? So I was kind of, I wasn't forced here other than, as I said, no place else to go. And I guess I heard what I had to hear at the time I had to hear it. And I do make a choice to stay today and to follow the suggestions as best I can. And I don't know about you, but for me, it's been the best thing that's ever happened to me.
That's why I choose to come. We have three good speakers. It seems to be loaded with the upper Midwest today. And I sense they all have a bit of a rooting section, which is great. And so we'll start off with our first speaker who comes to us from Wisconsin. Would you all help me welcome Doreen. I got my letter on March 22nd, and here I am. Isn't this exciting? This is my first convention. And it's just, other than getting sober and, well, maybe getting married.
It's just one of the most exciting things that has happened, I believe. My name is Doreen, and I am an alcoholic. My sobriety date is August 21st, 1982, and that is through the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, the grace of God, and everybody here. My home group is 10 a.m. Saturday morning, 101 Algoma Oshkosh, Wisconsin. And they are all thinking about me, believe. Some people have said, are you nervous? Well, I don't know what this is right in here that's kind of grinding, but I don't feel too bad because I know that you're all my friends.
And basically you have come somewhat the same way that I have and gone through some of the same experiences that I have. But when I was sitting outside here today by that lovely fountain, I looked around and these thousands of people were walking around and everybody was smiling and laughing and having such a good time. And I felt like that. I just felt, for an instant, I got inferior because I thought, why this drunk from Oshkosh, Wisconsin?
But here I am. I also, you see these papers I brought up here. When I do get a little nervous and see all of you out there, if I were to memorize what I was going to say or make notes, I'd forget. So I typed it. And I don't think that's cheating. I hope not anyway. As Pete was saying on the board outside and from the program, the topic is freedom to choose. But the wrong choices were made in my life. I became powerless over alcohol and my life became unmanageable.
The childhood memories, most of them that I can remember, were my parents drinking. And they weren't good memories because they were always fighting. And I vowed at the time, not if and when I ever got married, not to have to go through that. But quite often my mother would have to get in bed with me so that she'd have protection from my dad. And those are the things that I do remember. I remember the Sunday afternoon rides that we'd go that dad would take us on thinking it was a big thing. And in those days the cars had running boards.
I'm giving my age a little way here, but you can see that by the grain of my hair anyway. And we always ended up in the tavern, nickel beer days and nickel bag of potato chips and the whole thing. After graduating from high school, I moved to California and lived with an aunt who was very ill and had some children that needed taking care of. And I'd always wanted to go to California anyway. So I went out there and when she got better, then I went to work in an office.
On a dare from friends in that office, I went through some interviews and ended up flying the friendly skies of United Airlines. And I'm grinning about that because there were fond memories there. There was some drinking involved, yes, but then it seemed like a lot of fun. We were really having a good time. And I didn't think I had any problems at all. After some time of flying, I went to Cheyenne, Wyoming and taught nine classes of stewardess school.
The school is no longer located there of course because now it's all jets and they're in the Chicago area. And during that time in Wyoming, the flights of course for us as employees were cheap.
[00:05:01]
And I went to the Bahamas and I went to Hawaii a couple of times. One of those trips to Hawaii, I got too drunk because I ended up in Seoul, Korea married. But I was engaged to another guy in Wyoming at the time. You know, and I have to be very honest with you all, I wasn't going to tell that I was going to skirt around how I got out of the airline. And no, I really was because seriously, I didn't want you to know that I had done that.
I thought you wouldn't like me because of that. But on the advice of some friends, they said that I have to be honest and put that in there. So now you know, that's what I did. While there in Korea, that was a disaster because there was a lot of drinking involved there. And I regretted a lot giving up the good job that I had with the airline. So I went back to Wisconsin and a divorce happened of course.
And while back in Wisconsin, I got another good office job and my parents became my real good drinking partners. And that didn't last too long and I found another man and jumped into it again. But this time there was a seven-year-old stepson involved, which was okay. And we moved to Illinois. In the first year, another son came along. And a year and a half later, we had a daughter. And my husband at the time, I'm happily divorced now.
Her dad got a job driving a truck over the road. And this caused the marriage to go downhill, slow but sure. I became very independent and started buying a lot of beer. And I was very resentful because I had to stay home all the time and take care of the kids in the house and make all the decisions. And when I'd ask for help, I never got it. And when he was home, he was always sitting in the tavern.
So like I said, there was a lot of mental abuse and there was a lot of physical abuse in that marriage also. And it ended. In 1980, my sister was living in Wisconsin. And she and her husband lived on a farm, a rented farm two miles outside of this little town. And there was a house for rent down the road from her. And she said, why don't you and the kids move to Wisconsin? Well, maybe that was a geographical change.
I don't know. I never did look at it that way. But by this time, my ex was still driving truck and the older son was living with him. And he was driving truck, too. And my two teenagers didn't want to come to Wisconsin because why was I taking them out of a high school of 3,400 kids and putting them in one that was 400? But I wanted to go, so we went. This house that I rented out there on the farm had seven rooms and a corn crib and a chicken coop and a barn and a half acre to mow.
And we were just, I was in hog heaven. A bottle in the cabinet. That was great. But when, if I ever ran out of vodka or saw that I was getting low, I went down the road to my sister's house. Or we would run to the store. There was always, it was just always available. And I burned down the chicken coop, too. I had told all my friends in Illinois I was going to go to Wisconsin to raise chickens. Well, we never got a chance because I burned down the chicken coop.
And I did that by lighting some leaves and the wind was blowing in the wrong direction. You know how that goes. About the same time, well, now I'm still in Wisconsin, the ex decided that he shouldn't have to give me child support anymore because he had to live, too. Oh, come on. Well, anyway, there was a big hassle there and I ended up having to go on county aid. Then my sister and her family moved to Arizona.
And there I was out on the farm alone with my kids who, like I said, were teenagers. But it just got to be very, very difficult, especially with money. There just wasn't enough money to go around to keep me in the booze because by this time I was drinking day and a half of the night. And, of course, my kids were very unhappy, too. I had a brother that lived in a city about 45 miles from us and hadn't seen him for a long time.
And I tell them, and I can tell you all very honestly, that the day that I called them to say, come out to the farm to see me, we'll have lunch or something, I believe that it was God had his hand in my picking up the phone that day. Because when they got to the farm, I was drunk at 9 o'clock in the morning. I was thin, my skin was yellowed, and, of course, my kids were just unhappy as heck.
[00:10:03]
It wasn't a nice situation to walk into. They went back home and made a lot of phone calls and talked to several of their neighbors who happened to be in recovery and asked what to do about me. Well, they came back and my brother said, after quite some argument, that if I wouldn't go to the treatment center, he would throw me over his shoulder, put me in his car, and lock me in. So I went. But nobody told me it was going to be 28 days.
For a long time, well, at least for the first year of my sobriety, my sister-in-law was always good for saying, are you mad at us? No, we're not mad at you. You saved my life. I don't know what would have happened otherwise. Could I have a glass of water, please? Oh, here. The choices I have today in my life are many. One was a little over six years ago when, at my home group, I asked if I could be a GSR.
I knew they didn't have one, and by hearing other people talk, I got to know, and I read some literature about what a GSR was. So one morning I said, can I be your GSR? Well, some people snickered, but they all said yes. And it was fortunate they agreed, because service work has played just a major, major part in my sobriety. I could stand here and talk about the freedoms to choose, but more about service work and what it has done for me.
For two years I served in a district office, and right now I'm secretary of Area 74, which is the northern Wisconsin and the upper peninsula of Michigan. And along with the service work, I get to go to conferences and intergroups that we have. A man asked me out here today if we have roundups. Well, no, we don't have roundups, but we have other things, too, and they're just great. And this is, like I said, my first convention, and, God willing, I hope it won't be my last, because in five years in San Diego, I might see maybe one out of you that was here today, and that would be just neat, out of the thousands that are here.
But, like I said, service work is so important, and it is one way that I can give back to all of you and everybody out there something that has been lovingly given to me. I had the freedom to choose, to have chosen God as my higher power. The last promise on page 84 of the big book tells us we will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. And in the beginning, I thought I could do this whole thing for myself.
God could be in my life, but not in the way that it tells us in the big book and in this promise. There was just so much that I had to do to get myself well and keep myself going that way that I had to have help, and it took me a long time to surrender to that, because I really thought I wanted to be in control, but I couldn't. Every night when I go to bed, I just thank God for the day of sobriety that I've had again and hope that I have done something good that day, and today will be even extra special, but even if I just smile at somebody in the office where I work or the bus stop or something like that, I feel that I might have helped somebody that day.
When I was getting ready to put this talk on paper to get some seemingly order to it, I asked God if I was to really do this, and there was a lot of sleepless nights and painful memories. That was really the worst part, was the painful memories. And my mind was just grinding and grinding all the time, but he must have wanted me to because here I am. We see God's power to change every man and woman in this room.
Have you ever looked around at a meeting and wondered what would have happened if we were drinking? Those people in that room, we women would all think we were beautiful and sexy, and the men would think that they were better than the next guy and God's gift to women. But by his power and grace, we are not those people anymore. AA works because it deals with truth and reality. We would never recover if we didn't share each other's strength, hope, and experience.
Because of God's grace and AA, we can live the rest of our lives on borrowed time. Unborrowed time and time that God has given us. When I was in the treatment center, there
[00:15:04]
was quite an elderly gentleman there and he sat down by me one night and said, Doreen, you know you've been given a second chance. And that didn't mean a thing to me at all. I had no idea what that man was talking about because I didn't know what was going on. And now I do fully realize that I have been given a second chance. And as far as I'm concerned for me, there's never, there will be not another recovery. The relationship between God and myself is based on grace. And grace is the incredible acceptance of each person through God's love. God's word of grace says that neither guilt nor shame can separate us from God's love. It's unconditional. I heard the pastor in my church say almost, he did say it's unconditional but something similar to preceding that. And I accused him of taking it from mine. Not good. The choice I have today is to be an alcoholic. And I'm glad about that. I really am. We were discussing in the motel room about if we buy these t-shirts and these lovely jackets that they're selling here and people come up to you and say, why are you wearing that? What does it mean? What are you going to say? Well, for me there's just lots of things that I could say. But I didn't want that disease and I'm sure that none of you out there wanted it either. But at this point in time, the alcoholism is the disease that I have. In the other diseases, cancer, what have you, there are medications and radical treatments. But the treatment for my disease is simple. Don't drink. Read the big book and go to meetings. I lost my just super mother and mother-in-law and father-in-law to cancer. And I saw the pain and the treatments that they were going through. And it wasn't pleasant. But it did try to arrest them. And my way in my everyday living of arresting my disease is by working the 12 steps of the program and going to meetings and reading the big book. And with the help of every one of you here and back in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, I'm going to stay sober one day at a time. How about the freedom to choose to say no?
On the day of my last drink, that word wasn't in my vocabulary because I felt so good. I was just going to break every bottle on the back bars and tear down the liquor stores and just everything was going to go right because I just felt so good and I wasn't going to say no to anything. But that has changed in these few years that I have been sober. I also wouldn't say no to anything in my church or a few volunteer organizations in the city of Oshkosh. And I had to learn to do that because I had to learn to take care of myself.
And I find that I do selfishly sometimes need to be by myself. I have a lovely second floor apartment that overlooks the lake in Oshkosh. And there's lots of times I just say that's it and I sit down with some coffee and a cigarette, which I'm going to have right now, and just watch the world go by. But I have to do that and I'm sure that a lot of us here have to do that too. Another freedom that I have and a choice that I have is to change my mind. And it's not only a woman's prerogative. As far as I'm concerned, 100% of this statement, to change my mind, applies to will I drink today? And of course the answer to that today was no.
A desire for alcohol has been taken away from me and to go back to that life would certainly be death. And as you can see, at my age, I'm still sober today and I've got a lot to look forward to yet. A choice that I didn't would rather not have made if I'd had a choice would have been the pain that came with the recovery. And there's still a lot of painful things in recovery too. But without those painful feelings, I would have lost the chance for new awareness.
And this was motivation to make changes. Anger was a big one for me. When I first got sober, I was angry at the disease, but I was angry at the years that I wasted. Not so much for me, but for the life of my teenagers and especially the two of them that were on the farm with me in Wisconsin. They didn't deserve the life that they lived with their drunken mother in those days. And they deserved a
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lot better than that. I was going to ask them about that in preparing the talk. My son's name is Matt and my daughter's name is Chris. I was going to ask them that, but I just really didn't want to hear it. I was angry at God when I first came into the program. My parents had always brought me up in the church and I brought my kids up the same way, but I felt as though he had let me down. The phrase that a lot of us use, get me out of this and I'll quit drinking, well, never works does it? I think his plan for me was to put a few more gray hairs on my head and my body was failing and I had just had enough.
And that anger now towards God has turned to gratitude, peace, serenity and happiness that only he can freely give me. Every day I'm confronted with opportunities to make responsible choices, but no choice I make will be wrong. Maybe slightly wrong, but I can go back and choose again. I may not be aware of the seriousness of a choice at the time, but no choice is without acceptance in my life. Again and again, chances are presented for making the right choices that will continue towards my goal of recovery. My daily living is healthier if I make a lot of choices and my choices get healthier. Beliefs, friendships, a lot of thought and time go into these situations to make sure the choice is right for me.
I may say they can define my character sometimes and that can apply to some of the people that I have come to know in the program. When I'm in, I know a newer freedom when I'm in control of things and I don't mean the old controlling that when I was drinking either. I have to take a lot of time to think about these risks that I'm going to take and have the courage to do the changes that have to be made. But every minute there's choices and they can be sadness or happiness, a success or failure to you and to me.
These freedoms and choices that I make are not just for me, but they're also for people outside of the program and for those in AA. I have to be able to have people say no to me and that was difficult too. And change their mind and tell me they've made a mistake. And that can be hard as my life is really great now and why should things go wrong? But they do. That's where God's wisdom and his will play a major part.
The serenity prayer, I want to say that the serenity prayer tells me to accept the things I cannot change and the courage to change the thing I can and the wisdom to know the difference. I had a terrible, terrible time in early recovery understanding that wisdom. But there have been two very serious things I think that have come along in my sobriety that I have used the serenity prayer quite often and again tried to find that wisdom to change the things I can but I can't.
My oldest son, a month ago I read in the paper that he was arrested for delivery of coke and marijuana and I didn't know a thing about it. I have a little note here that mothers and wives are the last to find out these things. And I'm embarrassed, I'm ashamed and I'm very angry at him. But Eric does know that I love him and he has my support to a certain extent. My son Matt had a drunk driving ticket four years ago and I was really upset about that until a very good friend of mine said, oh goody. And it was, it was, it made just those two words made me feel a lot better and thank you Kay for saying that to me because it made me see the whole thing in a different light. Matt is still using and I know that I can't change him and he's just, he and his sister are my biggest supporters but he thinks he's having fun so I'll let him have his fun and if he wants to talk he knows a lot of my friends on the program or of course he knows that he could come to me too.
Oh they can't be the last page you guys, just a minute, I gotta get organized here again.
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Where did they go? Oh help. Say, it's not as Matt as a speaker I heard in the other room when he was standing there talking and he said to the chairperson, what am I talking about? I'm not, I don't want your notes. So I can, hmm, okay, here it is, here it is. Oh, I wanted to tell you to go on here about my needs. And those are hard to choose a lot of times too but they have to be given priority because I cannot give away what I don't have and I have nothing unless I pay attention to myself. When I was in the treatment center, it was a Catholic hospital and one of the nuns said to me one day, by the end of the time that you're out of here you're going to look in the mirror and say I love you. I thought she was drunk. But I did and I do. I can look in that mirror in the morning feeling so great and say I love you Doreen. You're a neat person these days. So if you haven't tried it, try it. It's neat. Today I am aware of the choices I have and am making some good ones, staying sober by the 12 steps of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. If I don't take good care of myself, none of my choices will turn out very well. My personal and emotional spiritual growth is in my hands. The AA program offers me the tools and God will provide the guidance. I'm sometimes afraid to make these choices in my life. I may not want that responsibility for my everyday life but it's mine. And like I said, I'm happily divorced so I don't have anybody to get in my way. And this is when I know that I can turn to God to help me with these responsibilities. By coming to AA, I have chosen the biggest act of responsibility.
All I have to do are make the right choices. When I ask for guidance, I will always know which they are. And they're not always easy. But I have to live with that. Today is fully mine to delight and live or dread. That freedom of choice is always mine. Guess what gang? I'm on the last page. Today, my life is great. I just told you about my two sons. My daughter is on her second marriage, driving a truck with her husband, taking over my office job while I'm gone. And they are, the two younger children are my biggest supporters. And I thank God every day for that. I have never done a formal apology to those children because by staying sober every day is my apology and my amends to them. I put them through hell during my drinking years. And I like my job and all these good things that are happening and coming to Seattle and I hope I can get to San Diego and meeting everybody.
Isn't it neat to walk down the street and somebody says, Hi Doreen. You turn around and you say, Hi Joe. This is great. Last year, one of my very dear and special friends back in Oshkosh, Wisconsin was going through a very difficult time with her parents. She lost both of them within a year. And she called me quite often and as a good AA friend, there's lots of times I couldn't say what she really needed to hear, but I was a good listener.
And she sent me a card and I found that in my desk when I was going through it just before I left. And the message of that card is so special that I want to share it with you and direct it to each and every one of you. Thanks for the way you listen, for always being ready to drop everything you're doing and give me your full attention. Thanks for being there for me time and time again with your understanding support and your unquestioning acceptance. Thanks for being the kind of person I know I can turn to no matter what's going on in my life or yours. Thanks for all the things you've done that I could never begin to repay. But most of all, thanks for being you. Good luck on your sobriety and I love you all. Thank you.
Thanks, Doreen. I'd just like to echo your Thanks, Doreen. I'd just like to echo your sentiments about getting involved in service and what it does for one's sobriety. I know I've had that happen to me, and it's a great way to go.
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Moving right along, would you all help me welcome Jim, who comes to us from South Dakota? Good afternoon, everybody. My name's Jim, and I'm an alcoholic. I'm sober today by the grace of God and the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous, and through a certain amount of peer pressure. I came to Alcoholics Anonymous because on September 17, 1979, a judge in Moorhead, Minnesota asked me to exercise my freedom to choose.
I'm no Einstein, but four meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't take 30 days. He told me what the sentence was going to be and then asked if I had any final words. I could always come up with final words when the heat was on. So I started sputtering and coughing. I guess a miracle in my life is that there's a friend of mine, a guy that I had drank quite a bit with. He had a much worse problem than I did. He had managed to get into enough trouble that he had gotten so bad that he went to Alcoholics Anonymous.
So I told the judge that it had occurred to me when I was sitting in jail that night that when I get into trouble, it seems that I'm usually under the influence of alcohol. And this friend of mine goes to A&A and just maybe if I go to some of those meetings with him that I can learn how to drink right too and I'll never have to come back to your courtroom again. And he thought that was a good idea. Biggest con of my life and it's worked wonders.
Something I was thinking about the other day is that it really is a miracle because he doesn't go to Alcoholics Anonymous anymore. He seems to be leading a decent life but he doesn't go to A&A and I kind of wonder if he didn't just show up there for a while so that I could find my way in. I got here and I wasn't an alcoholic like I told you. I just was trying to stay out of jail but you people made me an alcoholic.
I started running around with a bunch of goons. I mean real, they were bizarre and I could tell. At first I was simply here because I knew that they were watching. The police had nothing better to do in Moorhead, Minnesota than to keep track of what I was doing. So I went to A&A just to make sure that they knew. I hear people talking about going to their first meeting and turning their coat collar up and kind of walking down the back alleys to get there so nobody would see them.
I walked into the meeting and I had my chest out and my head held high so all the undercover policemen would see me. I got to the door and I turned around and kind of looked around wondering where they might be. I wanted, at least I wanted the judge to know that I was going to those meetings. And that's how I got here. And I'm still here because I haven't figured out how to drink right yet. Somehow this group of people that I came into were fun loving. They were laughing much like the group today is.
And they looked good. I mean they didn't look like pukes. They didn't look like drunks. They looked good and they were smiling and having a good time. I didn't know what their problem was. I thought maybe a little drugs on the side might help. I just figured I'd stick around for a little while to help you people out. Besides that there was another guy. There was one guy who isn't going to AA anymore.
There was one other guy that I used to drink with quite a bit. When Carl came to pick me up, Denny was in the car with him. And Denny smiled and shook my hand and said, I'll bet you didn't expect to see me here. And I said, no, but you need it. So we went off to my first meeting together. Denny's here today and Denny's special.
[00:35:00]
They have special education for people like that. It's been fun. And I think that I might even be known for having a… I tend to practice that freedom of choice. Not always in my best interests. That freedom of choice has always been with us. When I was drinking, the freedom of choice was always there. I didn't have to drink. Nobody else poured it down my throat. But with every choice that you make, there are consequences.
And the consequence of me not drinking were the feelings of inadequacy and insecurity and inferiority that I could not cope with. It meant feeling lonely in crowded rooms. Just before I sobered up, there was a television commercial where a guy was at a party. And I think it was a commercial about breath deodorants or something. And the guy was eating an onion or some stupid thing like that. I figured anybody that was dumb enough to do that didn't deserve to be in a room full of people anyway.
And he was standing there and then a bell jar came down around him so that he was completely isolated from all the other people in the room. And I hated that commercial. I thought, how dare they put my life on TV like that? Because that's what I felt like. I always felt lonely, even in crowded rooms. And those were the consequences of my not drinking. So I drank. It was real easy to make that decision.
I drank, and I tended to use drugs, too, because it's kind of a recreational thing. If one didn't work, the other would. And you get the right combination, and you can talk to God. And it's a wonderful thing. I came in, and people were talking about spiritual experiences, and I didn't want one. I had been having those for a couple of years. I was tired of feeling the wind blow through my ears. I had had enough.
I had really had enough. And so I got here. And, you know, the more I listened to these foolish, foolish people, the more I started to relate with them. And they were talking about those feelings. And they talked about alcoholism as a disease rather than as a drinking problem. And they told me that if drinking alcohol was my problem, that I should simply stop drinking alcohol and I wouldn't have the problem anymore.
And I knew better than that. And they talked about this disease, about it being physical, emotional, and spiritual, and about the feelings. And I could identify with that. And so I hung around a little bit longer, because they seemed to be doing a little bit better with life than I was doing. And besides that, Denny still had 21 days more sobriety than I did. And, by the way, I like to remind him every once in a while, if you should decide to drink, I will be your sponsor.
But I would love to have that opportunity. And, you know, everything that I've done has been for the wrong reasons. You know, I make choices that seem to be the right choices, but the motivations and the reasons that I do them are really, really off kilter. And I think that's because I killed the wrong brain cells. I went to college and we used to talk about how it was okay to drink, because human beings only use 10% of their brain power anyway.
We were killing the wrong 10%. We were taking out the ones that were firing. And I don't know. I've been an Alcoholics Anonymous for a while now. And one of the choices I made early on was to get a sponsor. And the reason that I made the choice was because a friend of mine handed me the phone and said, ask this guy to be your sponsor. He had already dialed the telephone, and he was bigger than I was.
And so I asked him to be my sponsor and got him for all the wrong reasons, but I've kept him to this day for all the right reasons. He's a good member of Alcoholics Anonymous and really a respectable. He's not here, so I don't mind saying this. He's a good man. He's somebody that I would like to emulate, somebody I'd like to be like. He made some suggestions, and so I made some choices. I've got one of those mean-hearted sponsors that is somewhat dictatorial, but I do know that with a dictator of that sort, if I ever want to have an uprising, next time he makes a suggestion, all I have to do is say, screw you, and it's over.
It would probably be over in more ways than one, but that would be it. I don't have to follow anybody's suggestions or anybody's commands in Alcoholics Anonymous, but this person has been a tremendous example of what can happen as a result of it. And when I first came in, I was looking at the nice cars that he drove.
[00:40:03]
He had a good relationship with his wife. He lived in a nice big house, and he had all those material things that I thought I deserved and that I didn't have. I had a nice car that I had bought from a junkyard. I didn't live on Skid Row. I lived closer to my favorite bar than Skid Row. Why move to Skid Row? You'd have to walk further. And so I looked at those sorts of things, and now I can see things like the serenity.
Some people in this audience have it today. So serene they're… But international conferences will do that to you every once in a while. There's the respect of the people in the community. I go out for coffee with them, and people of all ages and shapes and sizes and whatever stop and say hi, and it's usually with a smile on their face. That's something new. It's something that I didn't always have.
I have a reasonable job today. I actually work 200 miles away from my boss. I could sleep in, and he wouldn't even know. But I make that choice every day to… Quiet in the peanut section, please. I make the choice to get up because I know that the consequences of making that decision are better than the consequences of sleeping in. So he might not know now, but he'll find out sooner or later. It's really been a good deal for me.
I've been around now for, as my sponsor says, I'm in my second decade of sobriety now. That means just a little bit more than 10 years. And one of the choices I made when I had been sober for about half a year was to go to New Orleans for the international conference down there. Once again, there was a guy standing next to me that was about a half a foot taller, and he suggested that I sign up, and so I signed up.
And it was a wonderful experience. And so when Montreal came around, I couldn't afford it, and I didn't have time, and I went and had a… Choices don't necessarily have to be rational. If they did, I wouldn't be your speaker today. And I'm here today. Doreen was mentioning that she was hoping she'd see at least one of us in San… down south. Where are we going? San Diego. That's five years away. I don't even have a pocket planner that long.
But I'll be there. I'll be there. You can look for me. I'll be there. I've made that choice. I'll do whatever it takes to get as much as possible in this program. I've always been kind of a selfish, self-centered person, and while I've asked God to take care of my character defects, he hasn't taken that away yet. I just try to use it for a positive, to make it an advantage instead of a defect now. And I know that I'm going to go for all the gusto I can get.
I don't see any reason why not. That's about all I have to say. Before I came up here, I had all sorts of wisdom. I sat down and read the big book today, and there's some real good things in there that have to do with freedom to choose. You should read it sometime. I'm sure you'll find it. I can't remember where it is. I just can't remember where they are right now or what it was. I'll probably have to go home and read it again myself.
It's terrible. I guess that's about it. I'll give you the same three suggestions that were given to me from the moment I stepped into Alcoholics Anonymous. If you want your life to change, if you want to feel clean inside, if you want good things to happen to you, all you need to do are three simple things. You don't drink because it's difficult to stay sober if you're drinking. You go to a regular meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous that meets at the same time, the same place.
That's to provide a little consistency in your life, to give you an opportunity to see other examples of what Alcoholics Anonymous can do. And the third thing is to get a sponsor, and even more that, abuse your sponsor. They tell us to use it. God bless you all. Thank you. Thank you. Denny, if you're interested, when the last speaker is done and we have some time, we'll give you a little rebuttal time if you're interested.
Good. Would you all help me now welcome our third speaker, who is Dwayne, comes to us from Michigan. Oh boy. My name is Dwayne Harder, and I'm a recovering alcoholic. Hello, everybody.
[00:45:17]
And I come from a little town called Bayport, up in the thumb of Michigan. It's a little fishing village, and if everybody's home, it's about 400 people. And most of the time I wasn't home, so the census was usually down. I'm going to start with a poem and a couple of things I want to share. I said to my wife, and this is the first time, I've had a difficult time deciding what I was really going to talk about and what I was going to share. I don't know particularly why. I honestly don't. It's just something that's either in my mind or in my life, somewhere along the line, or I didn't fully understand what they meant when they give us the title, Freedom to Choose. This I consider funny. When I first got the letter from the General Service Board, they asked to sign this stuff for the taping and that. And then they said that they would like to have me talk, and the panel was called Humility. If you know me in my area, you know that anybody would have a hard time talking on that. You come out here 3,500 miles to talk. Where's humility in that? But anyway, it's true. It's really true. When you talk about it, you don't have it, so how could you talk about it? So we were joking, and I wrote back and said yes, and then in about two weeks or three weeks, maybe it was, I got a letter back and they said they had canceled the humility panel. The best damn day of my life. I said, oh, finally. And then they gave me this one, and then I really got confused. Last night I went to dinner with some friends that I love very dearly, and they had a friend come in from Hawaii. He used to live in our area, and he asked me, what are you going to talk about? And I think it was through him that I learned that there were some things important in my life that I had not thought of up until last night and the rest of them today. And I guess it's that word, freedom. Freedom, whatever that means.
In four years, probably, well, let me see how many years it's been. I don't even know what year, the thing I tore out of a book, but I read a little pamphlet called The Upper Room, and I want to share this with you. And it talks about freedom. And this is what the message was that day, and the heading said, there was a part on the Bible that you're supposed to read, and I learned that from my sponsor, who told me that, I was always asking him questions about the Bible, because he was a Bible man, and he knew it. And one day in the car, he said, you know, if you want to know something, why don't you look it up yourself?
So I bought a Bible, and I started to look it up, and he's right. It's more fun when you do it yourself. But it tells you what to read in the Bible. It said, faithful friends. And then below that, it says, a friend loveth at all times. I just want you to consider what's in this message to each of us in the room, regardless of where we're from, or how old we are, or what sex we are, what color we are, or anything else. Think about what it means to us as an individual, and maybe to the person that really helped you as you come into recovery. It says, did you know that the word friend comes from the same root as the word free?
Years ago, when serfs gained their liberty, some of them chose to stay with their master who had been kind to them. There was a marked difference between those who still lived in servitude and the free folk, as they were called, who had the run of the house and were not restricted to certain quarters. Likewise, our true friends have the free run of our hearts. Think of that. They stick with us because they love us. Dr. DeHaan once said, I have frequently asked myself, how many friends have I really had?
If I take the definition of Proverbs 17, 17, a friend loveth at all times, I find that many people I counted on were just fair weather acquaintances or my old time drinking buddies. I thank God for the few, whoever, whose devotion never wavered. Someone has written this thought-provoking poem. When troubles come your soul to try, you love a friend who just stands by.
[00:50:07]
Perhaps there's nothing he can do. This thing is strictly up to you, for there are some troubles all your own, and paths the soul must tread alone. Bad times when love can't smooth the road, nor friendship lift the heavy load, but just to feel you have a friend. Who will stand by to the end? Whose sympathy through all endures, whose warm handclasp is always yours? It somehow helps to pull you through, and though there's nothing he can do, and so with fervent heart we cry, God bless the friends who just stands by.
Analyze your own attitude towards others. Can they depend on you to stay by their side when circumstances turn against them? Are you a faithful friend? It says there may be shadows about him, or trouble or woes that impend. He may have his faults, but I love him. I love him because he's my friend. And it says a friend will step in when the whole world steps out. The freedom I have to even be here comes from a group of people called Alcoholics Anonymous.
A couple weeks over 24 years ago, I was away from my wife and family. I had deserted them in California, stole a car and went back to Michigan, eventually very, very sick. And I was hanging from some rafters on June the 4th, 1966, because I had no choice. I had done everything that I never wanted to do. My father died of alcoholism and I hated him. And I had done that and worse. And I knew I didn't have a choice because I didn't know how to stop drinking. I could quit for periods of time and then I would start again. And when I started again, all hell would break loose and I would break loose.
But I never knew where I was going to be or what I was going to be doing. I did much more harm, I think, to myself most of the time than I did to anybody else. But because I had a brother and sister who I love very dearly and they're both dead now, I come from a family of eight and they're all dead. I've lived to be the oldest. I had two sisters that were alcoholic, a brother that was alcoholic and myself. My father died of alcoholism. But because those two still love me and I went to my brother's house and I said, Yervin, you've got to do something with me or I'll be dead and I don't want to be. And he thought someone had cut my throat. I had torn the skin loose from my head and my ears were loose from the scalp where the rope had jerked me up.
And my sister made a phone call because a young man had moved to Unionville, Michigan. Unionville is smaller than Bayport. Imagine that. And this young man was in jail in California. And one night, because some A.A. people come into that jail and provided people with donuts and cigarettes, he went there because he needed donuts and cigarettes. And he received recovery. And then he moved back to Michigan and he started another group and he had put an ad in the paper. Do you have a drinking problem?
Call this number. My sister called. They said what they were and what they'd done. They were a group of people that tried to help each other where they wouldn't drink and that we were welcome to come. No one run the meetings. And if we didn't want to stay, we could get up and leave anytime we wanted to. I had never had anybody act that way to me. The judges every time I was in jail told me I drank too much. Well, I knew that because the charge always had the word drunk before it. Drunk and disorderly. Drunk, disturbing the peace. Drunk on a public highway. Sometimes it was just drunk.
[00:55:19]
But always that word. So I never was confused about that, but nobody ever told me what to do. My wife, thank God we'll be celebrating 40 years of marriage on Sunday because of you people. She said, I don't mind if you drink, but why don't you drink like I do? Well, what the hell do you think I wanted to do? You know, I wanted to drink that way. It just never worked for me. And then that night in 1966, I went to that meeting because my brother told me I was much too sick to go on my own. I couldn't drive a car. I was shaking so much and I was really in bad shape. And he took me to the meeting June the 6th, 1966.
And I've not found it necessary to take a drink since that night because of you people. No other reason. You give me a choice. You give me freedom. That night there was three men that come up after the meeting. It was all over. And I really liked the idea of no one telling me what to do. Just said they would help me. They said they didn't even know if I was alcoholic. But if I chose not to drink, remember this, chose not to drink, that they would gladly help me any way they could. But the key for me at that time too was they said, if you want to drink, we don't want to interfere with that. That's your business.
I thought, my God, what's going on here? Where's the catch? What do they want from me? I didn't have nothing left. I didn't have anything left at all, materially, job-wise, anything. I had nothing. What could they get from me? And they said, well, we don't want anything. And those three men that night were to become my sponsors. Ralph from Auburn, who died about three years ago with 30-some years in the program. Giz, that died quite a few years ago, about 11 years ago. He had 13 years in the program, cancer.
And the other one was Ralph from a little town called Deford, and he had died with 28 years of recovery. So I miss them, people that give me the freedom. They were kind to me. My one sponsor said, pick a home group. I liked whoever said, I think it was Peter, said, get a home group. And my sponsor said, if you want me to be your sponsor, you pick a home group. And unless you're dead or disabled and in a hospital, and I can't be just disabled at home, I've got to be in a hospital, then I could have an excuse for missing the meeting.
And the last sponsor had been dead about three years, but every Monday night, I'd go to my home group meeting. I believe I owe that to those people that worked so hard to help me save my life. They were very kind to me in the beginning. I never had hard sponsors. They did nothing but love. I was thinking about this, friends that walk in, and I think that's what was so difficult. Ralph, the last Ralph, that died the last, he, I was in the hospital for back surgery. I'd had terrible time, and I had turned into pneumonia after they'd operated on me because I was still smoking at that time. And whenever they give you anesthetic, I guess it's really hard on your lungs, and I turned into pneumonia, and I had gone into shock, and Ralph stopped in.
And he started to rub my legs. This is a man about 50 years old at that time, and he started to rub my legs, and he picked the blankets up, and he just kept rubbing and asked me how I was, and I said, I just, I'm cold, Ralph. And he went from room to room, this man, and took blankets out of the closets, and he just kept covering me with blankets and rubbing my legs. And I was not to know until sometime later that he had something very important in his life at that time, an illness that was to eventually kill him, and he was on the way to the hospital that day to check in.
And he did not check in the hospital that day. He stayed and took care of me. Freedom and love. When I was in a body cast, the man would walk, or rather drive, It was in a body cast the man would walk, or rather drive, 40 miles to pick me up, load me in a station wagon, take me 25 miles to a meeting, bring me back home again, roll
[01:00:00]
me in a station wagon like an old drum, you know, bring me back home again, and then he'd drive 40 some miles to get back home again. You show me where any place in this world that we can receive the kind of love, kindness, and attention that we can find in this program, and I'll gladly join it. I don't care what it is, if you can show me that it has anything like we have here. There has been freedom over the years. I love general service. I had the opportunity to, that to choose when they decided to ask me to do certain things in the service work that I'd done them. Secretary, Treasurer, Chairman, Ashtray Cleaner, Coffee Maker, Sweeper Upper, whatever it was, because my sponsors did the same thing. I had the opportunity to serve as a delegate in 75 and 76. I got to meet Lois. I got to see Bill because of my first sponsor, Ralph, and we were in Miami at the convention there, and that was my first convention, and I know that feeling. Bill was at that convention, but he died right after that, but he did come up on the stage, and that gaunt look of his, and he had oxygen all hooked up to him, but he wished us all his love and said that he hoped we had a good convention, and it was my first convention, and it was heaven. It truly was. God, I didn't think I'd ever, I didn't think I'd ever rest again. You just stayed up all the time, and you just loved. God, it was just, I can't tell you what it's like in here, but if you've been, and you know what I'm talking about, it's there. Try to tell somebody else what that is. Later on you can't. It's just it. It's it, and it's been there 20-some years. It's never been away from me. I have, I love general service.
I run for trustee in our states at one time, and I lost to the hat, and I thought thank God. You know, knowing me, I'd probably killed myself trying to do it, but I love it. I love it yet today. I still love to clean up ashtrays. We had AA in our home for 14 years, every Monday night, never fail. That's why it was an easy home group, by the way. It's not all that bad. One time some Al-Anon ladies, because we had Al-Anon too, and they used to fix the desserts, and they kept one part of the house, and we kept the other. And one Al-Anon lady got figuring out what the average people of using our home in those 14 years, there were something like 19,000 people who used our home for AA meetings, and I loved every minute.
My wife still don't love it, but I did. I did. It was good to me, and that's what I've never forgotten, because to begin with, I didn't have a home. The home was a direct result of this fellowship. No other reason. We own it today. We live in the same house, same address, thank God for AA, because we had moved 32 times up until then, all over the United States. We've not moved since I got into the fellowship. Didn't have to run no more. The freedom not to run, the freedom to live where I want to live, the freedom to walk around in my own county where I couldn't return for years because my wife was on welfare, and the only way she could get welfare was to swear her word up for my arrest for child desertion and non-support, and I didn't want to come back into the county, but I don't back down from none of them today. I went from being a prisoner to being a probation officer. That helps. Because of the fellowship, I went from a man that couldn't get out of jail to one that could walk over to the jail in our counties up there and ask for anybody to get out and get him out. I never could do that. Freedom that has come simply because you folks love me. And I told Ralph one time, and I told AA this time, and I truly believe it more so today than I've ever believed in my life. When I look at someone, and I'm here, or I'm at my home group, or I'm anyplace else, I say, if you don't like me, it's your own fault. I'm a direct result of what you've been working on for 20-some years. If you want change, you're going to have to do it. And I believe that, that I'm a direct result of Alcoholics Anonymous and the love and the care that they presented me, and oh, by the way, my family. They give my family the love like we've never had, to come into our home and take care of us. When my brother died, man, they just come right down to our house.
And my sister, when she died, they were at our home. They just come and took care of
[01:05:03]
us. I remember Chuck last night, we were talking, I was going through Minnesota, and I bring this up because sometimes I think we lose sight of that. There was two incidents in my life that reminded me that around here we smile at each other, and we stick our hand out, and sometimes when we get to our meetings, we don't do that. But I was out in Minnesota getting some back surgery out at Mayo Clinic, and I was staying at the Kahler Hotel there in Rochester, and I heard this young lady talking that run the bookstore, and I just had a feeling. You know how you get the feeling that somebody talks funny like we do? You hear them say, oh God, one day at a time, man, I just made it. You hear that, and our minds begin to work. Well, she was waiting on a customer and everything, and finally when she got done with that customer in privacy, I said, you know, I listened to what you were telling that lady there and a couple others, and I got the feeling that you and I might have something in common. And she said, oh? And she said, are you from Rochester? And I said, no, I'm from Michigan, just here for some work. And she said, well, what do we have in common? And I said, are you a friend of Bill W? Well, it's just, you know, lit right up. Yes, she said, I am, and thank God you're here. We just went visit for a few minutes. But later on, they would have become very good friends. We went to their home for supper. We went to movies with them when I was out there in Minnesota. The one friend come and pick me up at the hospital. They put a body cast on me. I didn't have any clothes. He went out and bought me pants and everything that wore these great big pants that wore on the body cast, and then he picked me up in his car that folded down seats and took me to the airport, took me to AA meetings while I was there. And when I was back out there in 73 for the final surgery, I wanted to thank them at the meeting there in Rochester.
And so I thanked them for all the kindness they've shown. And this young lady from the hotel said, Duane, let me tell you something. We appreciate that. Of course, she's saying thank you because that's what AA is about, being able to say thank you. But she said, you know, you could have come here, went through the clinic, went out to St. Mary's, had your surgery, died there and gone back home and nobody would have known the difference.
The difference was that you let us know you were here. I've never forgotten that young lady telling me that. So I don't ever forget to tell people where I'm at that I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I never forget to carry my world directory with me so no matter where I'm at, I can go to a meeting. We were going to a conference up in Milwaukee. Oh, you reminded me of something, Doreen, I wanted to share with you. When you said you were, I talked to some lady out on the bench today that was from Oshkosh. And I sold magazines in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. And I thought it was great because at that time they used to have those great big nickel shoopers of beer. But I had two buddies that drank just like I did. And we worked for the Carl Collier Publishing Company. And they would put us up in a hotel. And then when we got done there selling, they would come in and pay off our bill. And then we'd move on to the next town. Well, the guy got so disgusted with us because by the time he paid off his bill, we never had any money left. We were trying to get enough to get back to Michigan on. And we were in Green Day. And finally he came in the room and he said, you know, he said, I don't think you guys are, there was three of us. He said, I don't think you're ever going to sell enough to overcome the beer bill. He said, why don't I just not pay the beer bill this week for you and give you enough money to go on back home. So we did. I stopped selling magazines in Oshkosh.
And that's what made me think of it. But we were on our way to Wisconsin. And I always carried the world directory. And my wife and I were going to this conference up there. And we stopped in a town called Pestigo. Yeah. Thank you kindly. I can't even remember now. And so we called AA and the man said, where are you at? We told him, he said, oh, we'll come and get you. I said, well, that's not necessary. We got transportation. We're just traveling. No, he said, just stay where you are. We'll come over and get you. So they did come and got it. My wife and I picked us up, took this beautiful meeting out of school. Al-Anon's come there from my wife and they had a meeting. And we had a very nice meeting, AA. And then we went out afterwards for dessert. And we thought, geez, that's really a neat group. You know, they have a good time. It wasn't till almost the end of the dessert time and the visiting time that we found out there wasn't any meeting that night. Ain't that something? He said, I sounded like I needed a meeting. And he called friends and they called friends and his wife called Al-Anon friends and they held
[01:10:01]
a meeting for us. You tell me that this isn't love and a fellowship? Yeah. Those things have happened consistently in our lives since I got into Alcoholics Anonymous. And that freedom that comes from just simply loving that I don't have to mistrust anymore. I just trust people. I just love people. Met Dee Dee there yesterday in the line and she had all the patients, little Dee Dees from Florida. And we were we were sharing some stuff in the line. You ever get tired of standing in lines? Did anybody stand in line over an hour a year? Yeah. Wasn't it fun? We we just had a hell of a good time. We met new friends from all over and we visited in two and a half hours in any line you get to know somebody.
But it was fun. And we didn't nobody really complained. And the one man made a remark after we had been in line for two and a half hours. It was the problem resolution section. If you go to that. Yeah. And we thought maybe the problems were getting really too tough to resolve and we may never get up there. Well, just before we got to the one guy made a wisecrack to me. I saw him today. I was going to tell him too. He said, you watch.
You get up because my wife and I had had a bad day up till that time anyway. Everything went screwed up for the whole day. He says, you watch. When you get up to that counter, you said the damn computer is going to break down. He said, the way things are going for you, that's what's going to happen. I was behind him. We were in the same thing because our initials were the same. He'd given his name. I give him my name. We stepped over to get our name tags and the damn computer broke down. He said, see, I told you when you got a run going, man, don't break it down. And I did. Anyway, it has been good. The service has been good. The opportunity to meet people. Just like me tonight, a man from Surrey, Canada, came over. I spoke out in Vancouver back in 78. It was friends again. We never know when we're going to see them again. Sometimes some friends of mine I only see every five years here. I've got other friends in AA that the only time I see them is our regional conferences because that's the only time they come, other than that. But I do get to see them then.
I have the freedom to go. I have the freedom to go wherever I want to. I don't have to worry about anything. I don't have to look over my shoulder all the time to see, are they still coming? And that lasted with me for five or six years. It wasn't something that I just, hey, stop drinking it in a way. I was nervous for a long time because I, well, you know, somebody said something about just because you're not married doesn't mean everybody's out to get you. Well, that's the way I felt. I didn't think I was all that bad, but I didn't know what I had coming. And I still say today, and I truly believe this, I've heard people say they want justice. And I assure you, I do not want justice. Not in my case. I'll take mercy. I don't know about anybody else in this fellowship, but I know what justice would be for this man. So I'm very grateful to Alcoholics Anonymous for giving me the freedom to be up here today, asked to come back at different times, not be ashamed of my life. The suit I put on today, I put on because my sponsor told me never, never to talk in front of Alcoholics Anonymous without his suit. And I don't. It's just the way he said it. That's the way it's been all these years. I was over in Midland giving an open talk and it must have been a hundred degrees in the thing, and the sweat was just pouring off in. And they kept saying, take your suit off, take your suit off. And I couldn't. I couldn't, you see, because my sponsor told me to wear a suit when I'm up here. He may be dead, but he's here today. All three of them are dead, but they're here today in me.
And I wouldn't show any disrespect for any one of them. I remember being asked to give a talk in Ohio at a conference by accident, and I had shorts on. These walk shorts that I just love. And the guy that introduced me, after he had guts enough to ask me to talk and I didn't want to talk to begin with, he said his sponsor told him that nobody ever wore shorts that ever sober up. And I said, you tell your sponsor, by God, he was wrong.
I got shorts. Yeah. That's the way I feel about my sponsors today. That's the way I feel about this fellowship. I respect everyone in this room.
[01:15:00]
And I love everyone in this room. I may not like some things, but I do love you. My very life depends upon you folks, whether you know it or not. It truly does. So I'm grateful for that. There's two things that I want to finish up with. I want to finish up with a poem. But I was thinking, going back to that thing of freedom. Back some years ago, when we were losing people by assassination. There was a man named Martin Luther King. Some of them know him.
I still love him. I still love what he stood for, what he tried to do. And one of the things he said in a TV thing, it etched in my mind as powerful today as the first time I saw it. And just before, we were over at the hotel and I was changing clothes, putting a suit back on, because I wouldn't be up here without it. It came to mind what he said. And you know the words, they're famous. Free at last. Free at last, thank God, we're free at last.
That's truly the way I feel. I am free to choose. If I choose and make a mistake, if I'm still alive, I can correct it. And that was something that I did not have when I came into this fellowship in 1966. I couldn't even decide not to mess my own pants. That's the kind of brain I had left because of my alcoholism. I have freedom today, and I owe it to you folks. And I'm going to finish up with a poem that I love, and I don't know whether it fits in to what we're doing, but maybe it does.
Maybe some of you have heard it before, but to me it reminds me of what we're all doing in this room together. What we're all doing here, and what the thousands outside are doing, and the thousands around us are doing that are in the fellowship. And what could have happened, I remember Clancy saying in Akron, Ohio at the breakfast, it was noisy, you couldn't hear nothing. And Clancy made a statement, just casual like, he said supposing, of course Clancy don't ever do anything casual I don't suppose.
But anyway, he said supposing that Bill would have taken the last dime and bought the beer instead of making the phone call, where would we all be? You could have heard a pin drop in the hall that we were in, there was 1,200 people. And just like that it became silent. Think where you would be if Bill had spent the dime on beer. Think where someone may be tomorrow if you should choose to spend the dime on the beer rather than being in a position to help someone else save their life.
And it will come. If you're a member of Alcoholics Anonymous there will come a time when you're obligated to save someone else's life whether you want to or not. And if you're taking the drink you can't do that. You can't give away something you haven't got. It took me years to understand that but it's true. Six men trapped in heaven stance in dark and bitter cold. Each one possessed a stick of wood or so the stories told.
Their dying fire in need of logs the first man held his back for on the faces around the fire he noticed one was black. The next man looking across the way saw not one of his church and couldn't bring himself to give the fire his stick of birch. The third man dressed in tattered clothes he gave his coat a hitch. Why should his log be put to use to warm the idle rich? The rich man just sat back and thought of the wealth he had in the store and how to keep what he had earned from the lazy shiftless poor.
The black man's face bespoke revenge and the fire passed from sight. All he saw in his stick of wood was a chance to spite the white. The last man of this floor-lowering group did nothing but for gain. Giving only to those who give is how he played the game. The logs held firm and death still hands was proof of human sin. But they didn't die from the cold without. They died from the cold within. Thank you and God bless each of you.
[01:20:01]
Thanks Dwayne. We have a couple of minutes left. If anybody here would like to share in anything that's been said or anything they'd like to say. Danny, your turn is up. We've got a couple of minutes left. Or anybody else? If you'd like to come up and share a bit. I'll do it. Just a couple of minutes. My name's Scott. I'm an alcoholic. Hi Scott. Hi everybody. And I just cannot pass up an opportunity like this.
When you were sharing Dwayne, I was thinking about something that I've shared with a few people. Since I've moved to Seattle about two months ago from Colorado, I've also spent some time in the program in Chicago. And being new here, the last couple of months have been sometimes of loneliness, not knowing people. And I thought about where I would be if I didn't have the special moments that I shared with some of the people in the program here.
And when I was at meetings, I started thinking about some of the people that made such a difference in my life. And how lucky I was that these people were there for me. And I thought about these moments. And just, you know, there are times I've heard these people say, Scott, I've had some really special times in my life. And I've had some really good moments with some really good people in the program.
And moving around and thinking about these times that I've spent with these people, it's just incredible. And I love you all. Thank you. Thank you. After hearing our three speakers, it's refreshing to know that there is good sobriety west of New Jersey in this country. You know, when you're east of Jersey and Jersey people come. I live in a tourist town and we get a lot of visitors, which is really special.
And people come to our meetings and Jersey people kind of think they're the be all and end all of sobriety of western New York. And we know today that that's not true. I'd like to thank again our three speakers, Doreen, Jim and Duane. I'd like you all to help me. I'd like to also say my thank you to the host committee and the people of Seattle for putting on a great show. And, you know, we've still got some quite a bit more to go and I'm having a good time.
I hope you're having a good time. We have a nice way of closing this meeting, if you'd all join in. 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. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Keep coming back. That concludes our program. Thanks for listening.