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Source: Various S – From Loneliness to Solitude – RS 17662 – 1990-07-04.mp3 File: various-s-from-loneliness-to-solitude-rs-17662-1990-07-04.mp3 Duration: 01:18:16
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I'd like to call this marathon meeting to order and welcome you all to the 1990 International Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Bill, and I am an alcoholic, and I am your host tonight. By the way, I'm from Everett, Washington, right up the road, round the corner and down the street. Okay, I would, I'd like to introduce Kirk B. We call him Captain Kirk. He'll read the AA preamble. Good morning, everyone. I'm Kirk, and I'm an alcoholic. AA preamble. 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 or opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety.
Thank you. I'll ask Kip to read the AA Anonymity Statement. My name is Kip, and I'm an alcoholic. Don't start with me. There are some, there may be some here who are not familiar with our traditions of personal anonymity at a public level, which states our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need 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 our anonymity is essential to the effort to help other problem drinkers who may wish to share our recovery program with us. And our traditions of anonymity reminds us that AA principles come before personalities.
Thank you, Kip. I'll read how it works. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. They are such unfortunates. They are not at fault. They seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average.
There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest. Our story disclosed in general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps. At some of these, we balk. We thought we could find an easier, softer way, but we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas, and the result was nil until we let go absolutely. Remember what we deal with, alcohol, cunning, baffling, and powerful. Without help, it is too much for us, but there is one who has all power. That one is God. May you find him now. Half measures avail us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked his protection and care with complete abandon. Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery. One, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. Two, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Three, made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him. Four, make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Five, admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs. Six, we entirely ready to have God remove all those defects of character. Seven, humbly ask him to remove
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our shortcomings. Eight, made a list of all the persons we had harm, and become willing to make amends to them all. Nine, made a direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Ten, continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admit it. Eleven, sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand him, praying only for the knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. Twelve, having a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we've tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. Many of us exclaim, what an order, I can't go through with it. Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. Our description of the alcoholic, chapter of the agnostic, and our personal adventure before and after make clear three pertinent ideas. A, that we are alcoholics and could not manage our own lives. B, that probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. C, that God could and would if he were sought. Okay. Now, our topic for this evening is pretty heavy for this hour. Yeah, this morning. It's pretty heavy for this hour. It's loneliness to solitude. We only have about an hour and five minutes now. So, we're going to get right on with the show here. Kip, out of Everett, is going to be our first speaker. Thank you.
Good morning. My name is Kip and I'm an alcoholic. This is one of those things that, you know, you walk into some place and your sponsor, sponsor grabs you and says you're speaking and here I am, by golly. I kind of got, you know, there's a lot of talk about alcoholism and there's a lot of talk about surrendering this program. I'm firmly convinced that I was beaten to submission. You know, when I got here, I had a lot of excuses as to why I did things. You know, I drank because of people and places and things and how I grew up and all this other stuff. And it wasn't until I'd been sober for a while that my sponsor set me down and kind of explained the facts of life to me. See, I drank the same reason everybody else drank. I drank because I liked the effect. You know, and what I've come to believe is that the things that are in the big book, you know, they told me where I came from, how I felt, and they gave me a chance to see where I could go. And it's all in the book, you know. The part that, you know that little black hole that you get in the middle of your stomach, you know, the one that you sometimes get a feeling for when you see a newcomer come in and you go, I remember what that's like. You know, that part that goes restless irritable discontent, chronic malcontent, incomprehensible demoralization. You know, those kind of feelings just kind of go, ah, you know. Yeah, the big book told me exactly how I felt when I got here. I wasn't real social when I first got sober. I checked into the care unit in Portland at 102 pounds. Spent 19 days in detox and 42 days in treatment and paid $8,000 for a big book.
But, you know, if you figure it out, all the money that we spent on drugs and alcohol and divorce courts and tickets and all this other stuff, you know, you add a dollar figure to that and, you know, we all belong to the most expensive health club in the world, you know.
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You know, loneliness is something that was mine from day one. And I'm sure a lot of you can relate to this, you know. I have a, my father belongs to the CIA. He's a Catholic Irish alcoholic. And my mother's a German Jew. I grew up in guilt central, you know. I couldn't do anything without knowing that I was going to hell for it. So it was kind of like, bag it all, let's do it. I'm the second youngest out of seven. We have three different families in our, in my family. There's the oldest four. There's five years for my sister and myself. There's another five years. There's my little sister. We had a system called children raising children because everybody had to take care of my parents.
My dad's a retired chief master sergeant. So making friends, you know, like up front friends was real easy because we moved every 18 months for the first 18 years of my life. I got to get in, get to know, and get out. So after I'd been sober for a while, it hadn't dawned on me that I'd learn how to be a compulsive liar too, which is something else that I had to deal with. But that loneliness that they talk about in the big book, the kind that nobody else knows like an alcoholic, you know, it's something that I'd had for as long as I can remember. You know, and it was real, real awkward in the first couple of years to get over that. You know, it's like all this stuff you did drunk and you thought you were having fun at, you know, you tried to do sober. You know, it's like the first dance I ever went to. You know, you walk in, you see all these people out there bopping and having a good time and not being real forward and wanting to get out there and try everything that's brand new. I just kind of stood back and somebody came up and asked me to dance and I said, well, sure. And they're out there just wailing away and I'm standing there kind of doing the, you know, the white man's overbite, you know. And I felt stupid, you know. But it's just like my sponsor keeps telling me. He goes, the only thing you have to work perfectly in this program is the first step. The rest is all practice. You know, so I did. I kept practicing, you know. And they had to explain to me that the program grows up around you because you're reaching out, you know. As a result of reaching out to newcomers and watching the program grow up around me, the loneliness started to disappear because I stopped centering and concentrating on how bad I felt, you know. And it's like every time I gave, I gave a little bit of that shit away, you know. And it's kind of like I can stand up here and tell you everything I've done since I've gotten sober, you know. And I can pretty much explain, you know, what happened, how it worked and, you know, I think I can do a fair job in explaining how to do the steps. But it's like if you don't do it, you don't know, you know. I heard a lady tell me one time, she goes, Kip, I can tell you what it's like to stay sober for ten years, but if you don't do it, you just don't know, you know. If you don't try, you don't know, you know. And I got here knowing it all, you know. And, and, you know, I believe that my higher power loves me enough to let me run to the end of my own rope several times, you know, just face first, you know. And, and that's what I needed, you know, because I had, I had absolutely no concept of humility.
You know, what I, what I believe today is, is I have yet to feel that, that emptiness that I felt when I first got sober, you know, prior to, to getting sober. You know, I've heard, I love you in this program in, in several different ways. The first time is, I was about a week before I got out of treatment and the, the, the counselor that had assigned me at the time pulled me in a little room and, and kind of backed me up in the corner and stuck his finger in the middle of my chest and said, if you keep playing with this stuff, you're gonna die, you little son of a gun. And, you know, it was in retrospect that I heard him say I love you, you know. The second time I had about two years sober and I called my sponsor up about two in the morning and said, I'm tired of this garbage and I'm gonna blow my brains off. And he said, well, if the program doesn't work for you and you don't believe it is, pull the trigger. And he hung up on me.
Pulled the trigger and he hung up on me, pissed me off, and by God I was going to tell
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him the next morning. So I walked into the eye-opener meeting and just jumped his shit and he laughed and a bunch of other people laughed and I couldn't understand what they were laughing about until I did it to somebody I sponsor. Then I figured out it was revenge. So, you know, you tend to get what you get because you do what you do around here. And I heard somebody put it really eloquently in a meeting the other day, you do good stuff, good stuff happens. You do bad stuff, bad stuff happens. You do nothing and nothing happens. You know, you can't transmit something you haven't got. And if all I am is empty, you know, and I guess that's what brings me to where I am now, you know, because I've been sober long enough and I've been around long enough to try all those other things again in sobriety. And next month, the 13th of next month, I'll celebrate five years, Kip Willing. As far as I understand, God always has been. And I've tried relationships in this program based on myself and they didn't work. They didn't fill that hole. You know, I've started two businesses and filed bankruptcy on both of them. Obviously, they didn't work.
You know, I bought a house and lost it. And just like everything that I've gotten into trying to fill that hole didn't work. You know, until saying, you know, one day somebody sent me down and read me the third step, you know, and they read it real slow because I got one of those minds that, you know, you know, I got to qualify myself here. I'm not an alcoholic, but I'm a recovering speed freak. You know, so if I refer to my mind going to 200 miles an hour in reverse, you know what I mean? You know, it's like, okay, we got it. No problem. You know, instant understanding. I've got it all, you know. And but I tried all those things in sobriety to fill that void that, you know, that something that was just missing. You know, I was sober and I was doing all this stuff and I was starting to feel good about me and I was starting to get some of the things that I heard other people were getting that were working the program, but there was that one thing that was missing, you know. And I know I've heard it before. I've probably heard it a thousand times, but it's kind of like one of those, oh, yes. You know, you hear it 300 million times and then one time in a meeting somebody says it and you go, oh, yeah. I knew that.
Oh, my God, I knew that. You know, and somebody said you can't fill a God-shaped hole with anything else but. You know, and in four and a half years sobriety, it's the first time I think I honestly did the third step. You know, it's like the first time I honestly got down on my knees and said, okay, you know, from here on out, God, it's me and you. And then, I don't know, it's just like something happened and the people that I started sponsoring started doing the same thing, you know. And it's just like, you know, like I said, I moved up here from Portland in October and the program has started to build up around me. I got up here with an attitude. I moved up here as a production manager for a company and two months later I ended up sleeping on somebody's couch. And what I found out is that anytime I start worshiping the gift before the giver, you lose it. And then I called my sponsor and was sniveling to him about not knowing anybody and being homesick and not wanting to move back because I was too embarrassed and da-da-da-da-da-da. And he told me, well, next time somebody asks you to do something, do it. So I walked into a meeting and there was a couple of guys there that I'd kind of talked to sort of before and I asked them what they were doing for that weekend and they said they were going up to Canada for a service convention they had. But one of the guys that had paid for his registration in his room and couldn't go and asked me if I wanted to go. So I ended up spending three days in Canada. Well, I come back to find out that my roommate who was supposed to be a normie decided to go out and get drunk and use our rent money for it and that I was evicted.
And I ended up sleeping on these guys' couch for two months. You know, now consequently, and I use the term loosely, these guys happened to be two of those, you know, AA social butterflies. You know, their living room was kind of like Grand Central. You know, and as a result of
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that I met my present roommate and several other thousand people, I believe. And God, it's hard to be lonely now. You know, it's really hard to be lonely. You know, and inevitably I'll get in that space where I just want to go off and hide and isolate and, you know, be by myself. And, you know, somebody calls on the phone and I end up talking to them. You know, I'm not sure how it works. I just know that it does. You know, and for today that's okay. You know, it's all practice, you know, and I've learned how to give myself a break. You know, my sponsor used to refer to me as suicidally serious, you know, because I was going to get this by God, you know. I mean, I'm a college graduate and all that.
And I went to school and I know how to study a textbook by God. You break out three or four dictionaries and you look up word for word and you do the whole thing. And I was driving myself crazy and him too. And he got tired of it and told me to lighten up or he'd break my neck. And, you know, and I love the man to this day. You know, I call him up on day and just to give you an example of, see, he has what I want. That's why I asked him to be my sponsor, you know. And I call him up one day and I'm sniveling about all kinds of stuff that, you know, today looking at it is not as bad as I wanted it to be. And he said, yeah, I know, because I got the same kind of problems. He goes, I got things going on in my life that I'm completely powerless over and I can't control them and it drives me nuts, you know. And being the good sponsee, I, of course, wanted to help my sponsor and asked him what the problem was, you know, me at two years, him at 23. I was going to save him. And he goes, I cannot keep those damn slugs out of my garden, you know. Those are the kind of problems I want, you know. I want to worry about slugs, you know. I do, you know. I got here terminally hip-slickin' cool. It was, you know, and it's fun to laugh out now, you know. It is fun to laugh at because I couldn't do it before. You know, there are two things that I learned how to do in Alcoholics Anonymous that I would not trade anything in the world for. I learned how to cry from the middle of my stomach and I learned how to laugh from the middle of my stomach and I don't ever remember being able to do that before, you know. I can be walking down the street in any place, USA or any place in the world and not be alone because I'm okay with me today. I'm okay with my higher power, you know. And as long as I can make it to an AA meeting someplace, I'm at home, you know, because they tell me that home is where your heart's at, you know. And I try and make a habit of saying that to visitors and to newcomers, you know, when they're in the program in their first 30 days and they're shaking like a leaf like I did, you know, welcome home, you know.
Because I, you know, I did. I shook a lot. I had a therapist tell me one time about two years and I'm sitting in there with my arms crossed, my legs crossed and she had no idea what alcoholism was, but she was treating it. And you're shutting yourself off and you're not willing to be real. And I said, no, I'm not. I learned how to sit like this to keep myself from shaking out of the chair, you know. See, I have a real problem with that and that's probably, you know, that's my problem. So I have a sister who has a year in this program now and I have two nephews that I used to shoot dope with that have eight months and six months in this program now. And my sister that just celebrated a year is graduating with her master's degree in social work. And she told me at her one-year birthday, she goes, you've learned in four years what it took me 16 years of college to figure out.
And I said, well, that's because you spent 16 years in college reading about something I've been spending four years of my life doing on a daily basis, practicing these principles in all my affairs, you know. And it's like the lights went on, you know. I can't give away what I read in a book. I can only give away what I do on my own, you know. I can share my experience, strength and hope and that's it, you know. And today that's good
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enough, you know. Today that's good enough. That's good enough for me. And if you got a problem with it, call your sponsor, read your big book and go to a meeting, you know. Deal with it, you know. But I'm grateful to be here. I'm grateful to be clean and sober today and, you know, it's, I wish, you know, and I just wish other people had as much vision as Dr. Bob and Bill W. You know, I'm eternally grateful to those two people by demonstrating the humility that they had, you know. And my favorite definition of humility is understanding God's will and doing it, you know. And I believe that they understood what God's will was and that's for one alcoholic to help another, you know. So it's all practice. So hopefully we'll see each other practicing real soon. And just one thing before I close. If you're reading in the book and you come across that phrase where we'll be meeting each other, trudging the happy road of destiny, look up the word trudge. It means walking with your head erect, with your shoulders back and your eyes forward. Thank you.
Sounded like the military there. Head up, shoulders back, erect. Okay, next speaker is going to be from New York. Frank Kay, are you out there? Come on up. Hi, my name is Frank and I'm an alcoholic. Hi. I remember one particular Christmas Eve. I had a snowsuit for the gal that's sitting in the back of the room. I had a job. I had a wife. Nice looking. I was in my early 30s. But I couldn't go home because, not that I couldn't drink at home or there was any thou shalt not drinks, it was, the bar represented unlimited amounts of booze. Not that I had the money to drink unlimitedly, but it was there. A lot of people in New York live in New York because, let's say they can get up at three o'clock in the morning and go to an all night deli or see all the cultural things that they never see, but it's there just in case. Maybe a lot of people here haven't been to Mount Rainier because it's, well, it's there and I can go tomorrow or whatever.
But anyway, I like feeling like this is, you know, feeling real, real, real lonely and arguing with the bartender because it's Christmas Eve and he wanted to close early and I said to him that he can't close. It's not the time. You have to stay open until two in the morning. Two in the morning. And he says, no, I have to close at two in the morning. I can't stay open later than two in the morning, but I can close anytime I want. It's my bar. Or he was working there, you know. So, no, it's, you can't, you know, arguing with the bartender to have another drink. All the other people were going home after shopping and had a few drinks and I couldn't, it's not that I couldn't face home, it's just, like I said, I couldn't face home. I couldn't, couldn't face me and I just, you know, certain times of the year like Christmas Eve or Thanksgiving night, I was mostly a bar drinker. Even in bars, there are certain nights that I don't even know where the loneliest people go to. Sometimes I was the only person in a bar like that. I mean, on those kinds of, on those nights, on those holidays. And conscious of it, conscious of it. And not knowing about why I was drinking the way I was drinking or about the first drink, about alcoholism, about hope, about About the first drink, about alcoholism, about hope, about Alcoholics Anonymous, I just didn't know, it wasn't even denial, I just didn't know.
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Um… Then I came in AA and got the message and all that stuff. And I picked up a drink after seven years. And… And I felt real, real alone because I had… Seven years without a drink, almost seven years without a drink. I got a seventh anniversary card from this group and I had to go, you know, and tell them I didn't make it. And, uh… I knew I was shutting myself off from AA doing that and, uh…
And I didn't really think I'd get it in the bar. A fellowship. I wasn't really looking for that. I was looking… To feel… Where… I didn't want to feel, you know, I… I learned something from drinking that… It killed the pain. Always did. But it caused more pain. It'd be like if you went to the dentist and he said… Like, I got a… Before I pull a tooth, I give you a shot of something, you won't feel the pain, but you'll have cancer.
So I wouldn't… I said, wait, wait, forget it. Just pull a tooth then. I would do that. I would say that. You're going to give me cancer for a tooth? Are you crazy? But I was willing to take, uh… A few moments of relief. And all the consequences that would go with it. And, uh… And I drank and… I don't know how drunk I got. I didn't drive a car that first night. And the second night that I drank…
I went to the clubhouse… The first night… After drinking the first night, I went to the clubhouse. This was in Cincinnati, Ohio. The 405 Oak Street. And they tolerated me like they do in most meetings. If not all meetings, they should anyway. If a guy's been drinking, as long as he's just drinking. I mean, not drinking at the meeting, but, you know, coming there under the influence. But on the second night, I got a real big personality change.
You know, I started picking fights with people and… Telling them off that maybe I should have told them off when I was sober. At least they'd listen to me. But drunk is, you know, Frankie, you know, look… You can stay here as you're quiet, but, you know, it can't be this behavior we're not going to tolerate, you know. So they kicked me out. I mean, that's how I felt. They kicked me out of A. They didn't kick me out of A. They kicked me out of this clubhouse that was, uh…
Guys that hang around between meetings, play cards, and stuff like that. And then I went out and I felt real lost. Because I kind of or knew that alcohol wasn't the answer. And yet I now was no part of Alcoholics Anonymous. So I was, like, real alone. Real, real alone. Real lost. When I felt lonely and so forth, I had to drink at least to compensate. Because I didn't know that I could go through this and not drink.
You know, like, what I'm saying is before Alcoholics Anonymous. So it's, you know, alcohol was like my saving grace. I've heard in meetings and it applied to me. I heard a guy say, you know, if it wasn't for alcohol, he wouldn't have made 30. And if it wasn't for Alcoholics Anonymous, he wouldn't have anything at all today. Meaning that if it wasn't for alcohol, he might have blown his brains out. You know, it took the edge off the not being able to fit in anywhere.
Or feeling like you don't fit anywhere. Or feeling this aloneness. And so here I had a lot of years without a drink. I didn't get away from meetings. No service even. And this moment of insanity. And I didn't think that I could drink again either. It wasn't like, well, now I'm cured or it'll be different. No, I knew because I had listened for hundreds and hundreds of speakers. And my own. I checked my own track record.
It took me two years, not even counting, it took me two years to get the first year. I was talking like seven continuous years of days without a drink. And it was painful. And I came back on the second or the third day. And I called up my ex-wife and I said, Patricia, it's over. I mean, it's good. I mean, it's over. The pain of drinking was so much worse than that particular pain that I was going through.
What it was, it was a divorce. I didn't handle it well, obviously.
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And I would get resentful and hatred. And I remember, and I believe in my own personal experience and what it says in the literature about resentments being the number one offender for Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, not going to meetings or not praying and all that stuff. Just full of hatred and bitterness. So you cut yourself off. And I suppose even God. And the drink just would make me forget that, you know, forget the pain.
And I remember when I was also when I first night I was drinking, then I was feeling OK. I was feeling OK. And I was like beside myself. And I said, then why am I drinking now? And I remember I'd seen this film a number of times in some of the rehabs. This is Father Martin. It's called Father Martin's Chalk Talk. And it talks about the alcoholic who's while he's drinking, then he's drinking just because he's drinking.
Forget rhyme or reason, forget steps in God. He's drinking just because he's drinking. And I said, this is it. Now I'm drinking just because I'm drinking. I had already taken the first drink. And prior to taking the first drink, you call your sponsor, do this or do that. I don't know. But I don't want to forget that. That's almost nine years ago now since I've had that last drink. And in New York, it's a kind of a joke and stuff.
People ask me what day it is because I generally when I share will tell you the day and the date. Very conscious of that because I made it an ordinary day. Extraordinary by picking up a drink. And I've been resentful before. There have been all kinds of states of whatever. And I don't know if that day was so different. But one thing that I was reminded of when I came back was a guy asked me if I asked God to help me stay sober that day.
And I said, no. He says, well, you'll never know if you would have stayed sober. So for over eight years, no exaggeration, without getting on my knees and having spiritual experiences, sometimes is believe it is sometimes not. I just say it like it was read tonight that God could and would if he was sought. And so I say, God, help me stay away from the first drink today. And I back it up by going to meetings and do this and do that.
No controversy here. You can stay sober and not ask God to help you stay sober. No controversy in Alcoholics Anonymous. But I haven't heard anyone that asked God to help him stay sober on any given day and drank. Now, if I heard that, then it would be I might have some doubts. But in these 16 years, I haven't heard that anyway. That's helped me stay sober, that simple prayer. And at times, it's been 10 years since I've been divorced and I haven't remarried.
And I had a girlfriend for a couple of years and she wanted to get married. And it's not that I didn't. I just didn't. I don't know. I wasn't trusting. And I don't know. I like being with her and her two boys and so forth. But I couldn't make this commitment. And many, many times I felt lonely in that regard of having, you know, it's nice to have a sponsor and a room full of people and a service. But there's that moment of truth when you put the door, the handle on your bedroom door and, you know, there's nobody there.
Now, I don't know how I get through that. I swear to God, I don't. I swear to God, I just I just accept it, I suppose. Or maybe I'm just getting used to it at times. A lot of times I really don't think about it. But there are times like being here at this convention, I kind of think of it. I remember how hopeful I was of my marriage that, well, now I'm an AA, it'll work and all that stuff. And that was in 75. I went to Denver and was seven months sober.
And I went because I didn't think I could stay sober. These internationals are every five years. So I said, well, let me go while the going's good. And, you know, and we'll take a vacation and we'll try to get, you know, be together and all that stuff. And but it was a lot more forceful than it was, a lot more forceful. It was like I got a you go to Al-Anon where we don't need marriage counseling. And it's, you know, and this and that. And I remember when my wife read.
I was reading about Bill Wilson before the past nine. There was another book. Someone in a had wrote a biography of Bill Wilson and it states that he had sought psychiatric help. He suffered from severe depressions. And I remember I had never had it was a living room in Swifton Village.
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I was reading the book and she gets up and this is all imitators. She gets up in front of me and she says, you mean, Frank, the great Bill W., the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, this great spiritual being, you mean he actually had to go for psychiatric help. You mean A.A. wasn't enough for him. I said, OK, OK, OK. So maybe I needed and still need some other help besides A.A. because I have had doubts of depression where I just just just close down.
The saving grace is that, oh, I got to chair the Amsterdam meeting at four o'clock and run out like a rat, do the four o'clock meeting and then back in my hole again. I know I've just I don't have any answers on how to be not lonely. But that service part for one hour once a week, you know, got me through the many times I've been more responsible or committed to a commitment in Alcoholics Anonymous than I have for a job, for instance, or meeting someone here or there.
So giving service in a way of giving service over time is has been helpful. And I had a tremendous joy earlier. My teenage daughter is back there and I was dancing with it at the Westin, you know, and it was just neat. I'm 50 years old and I was she said I did pretty good. And when the wife took them and went out to Cincinnati, I thought I would never see him again. Not because I couldn't or there was a law. It was just that I I was in a state of total despair.
A total not even not lonely. I was despair, just hopelessness. I didn't know that the message of Alcoholics Anonymous hadn't reached me. I hadn't reached out for it and I and neither was it, you know, like given to me. No one ever said join AA. They would say things like, why don't you drink like I do? Or Frank, sure, you drink your shots and beers, man. Lay off the lay off the shots. Just drink beer or or old fashions, you know, leave the fruit out.
I can drink. I can eat loads of oranges and cherries and whatever. And I don't get sick. Seven and seven. It's too sweet. No wonder you throw up, you know, you know, like coating your stomach before drinking scotch and milk. So all these I heard all the remedies except the first drink. I didn't hear about this out there. That's still being said out there. You know, I worked in restaurants and I eat some Italian bread.
I thought the Italian bread would soak the booze up in mice. I mean, I'm not a doctor. I don't know what my thought my body was. Bread has nothing to do with soaking up alcohol. But in my mind, you know, I listen to this. It sounds it seemed reasonable. It's Italian. I mean, take the bread, you know, soak up the gravy bowl of spaghetti. But I didn't hear about this this this message of the first drink.
And when I came in and still now I when I feel this way, I feel that way. I feel my best when I'm in a meeting. And so I'm really, really happy to be here. It's you know, the years have come. I've gotten divorced and the girls are one in college and one third year in high school. You know, they've had a sober dad for outside of those two days and time and distance. The last 10 years has been I haven't been you know, I have visitation, but I don't have the time and money to see them once a week.
But when I've seen him on holidays and so forth, it's been on the whole pretty decent. And this is the best of the four that I've been to. I mean, Montreal was nice with Lois Wilson and so forth. But for me personally, you know, I was just watching my daughter just glide like a butterfly across that floor. I just gave me I don't know, just carry and she don't smoke. She's on me about smoking and my too much coffee, you know, but I'm in pretty decent health and I just just feel great.
And I I feel less lonely and I get lonely and stuff. But not not that despair of like on a Christmas Eve, not knowing nothing. Not knowing nothing, but yet kind of knowing, like, you know, being beside myself, you know, like, like when she left, she said, Frank, I don't know what's happened to us or what's happening to
[00:45:02]
you, but I don't want to be part of it. And we had no answers. It was just like you resigned. I resigned myself to go on the Bowery because that's what happens to some people in life. And and that's there's some people that are criminals and some that wind up in the Bowery and some are doctors and lawyers. And I guess this is my lot in life. And I was willing to accept it because then if I wasn't, then either I was crazy or what the hell was was was happening. You know, I wasn't born a drunk. I didn't start drinking until I was 18.
There was no drinking at home. There's no drunkenness, no drinking at home. And so I couldn't figure it out. And now I've figured it out. I'm an alcoholic and I can't drink. And that's a great relief for my drinking part. And the other 12 steps, I try to work them. And and it's not so bad. I've been up and down. I've been homeless. I've been this and that. But I some reason right now I'm just remembering the good times. I remember going in a car with a bunch of people and going to Batesville, Indiana, to take some drunk to the rehab and a fellowship to and from in the car. And I don't know, just just a lot of good times, coffee shop times after the meeting and laughing like this fellow said, really laughing over. We don't I don't know what you guys do with coffee. So we don't always talk about AA or Alcoholics Anonymous or we just talk about just silly, dumb stuff. Just just just laugh.
I've just had some really simple, simple good times. I'm from New York City. It's a big city and people come from all over the world and visited this and that. And when you're drinking, or at least when I drank, I, you know, they people were going to the I didn't go anywhere. And I felt that I felt conscious of I'm not having a good time. I don't go to dances. I don't dance. I don't go to parties. I all I do is drink. And I expected myself more because I'm from New York, you know, and and now the bars don't bother me and all the nightlife because we have our A dances and group anniversaries and and fellowshipping. And it's no, no, no kind of loneliness like it was before. There's loneliness at times because I'm I'd like to have maybe somebody special, but it's it's not overwhelming. It's not obsessional. And so it's it's been for me.
It's been a good life. This this journey and I'm glad he explained the word trudge because I always thought that was one word that tripped me and sounds so like trudging. But it's I'm glad that I never thought to look it up. So I'm glad he gave us a definition tonight. OK, thank you. OK, how about Jim D from Vancouver, British Columbia? A lot of tired eyes out there. On your feet. Not me, I'm a night owl. My name is Jim and I'm an alcoholic.
And I'm happy to be here tonight. Just talking about this, this is a good subject for me is loneliness. I was brought up with a family, but they were all individuals. We didn't have a family, actually. There's a bunch of individuals living under one roof and and they were splitting up and getting back together. My mother would take off with half the kids and then she'd come back and in a year or so or something like that and and then she'd go away again. And my mother and dad were always fighting. And I never felt a part of anything at all. You know, one of the things I lived on a farm and I would I was quite friendly. I would like to bring my friends home after school, but my dad wouldn't allow this. It interfered with the work I had to do, you know, and this is from the time I was six years old and he chased them all away. So I got a big resentment over that, too. But one of the things I didn't like was my dad was an Irish Catholic and he was very strict about going to church on Sunday.
[00:50:11]
And I was an altar boy and I hated this. I hated this, being an altar boy. And he'd tell me that if I did anything against the church, well, God would send a thunderbolt down and strike me dead. Well, I wanted to get out of this job of being an altar boy anyway. So I couldn't figure out how because, you know, if I went and told him, well, I would get the hell kicked out of me. And that wasn't unusual, you know, getting the hell kicked out of me. But anything that happened, well, I think I got beat up for it. If one of the calves died, well, I got licking for it, you know, or anything that happened, it was my fault. So I made a big decision. I would kill two birds with one stone here. I would.
We had a little bit of alcohol around the family. I had tasted wine. I didn't like it very much, but I tasted it. It made me feel good. And we used to get a little watered down rum around Christmas time. That was real good. I used to take my sister's because she didn't like it. So I noticed that we had this big redhead priest there, you know, and he would be going through his thing in church there and he'd take this wine and drink it and then like this, you know. And I thought, well, hmm, must be something to this, you know.
So anyway, they had this big church celebration and I was all dressed up in my altar boys outfit and I was supposed to go on this parade with everybody. And so I thought, I'm not going on this parade. I'm going to get out of this thing entirely. So I stayed behind, kept one of my friends and we got the priest's wine out there. And I can remember taking a belt of this wine, taking a belt of it and looking up, waiting for the thunderbolt there, you know, the thunderbolt didn't come. Well, that did two things for me. It taught me how to use alcohol to get out of my problems and I became an atheist instantly. And, you know, I didn't believe, I thought this was a conspiracy that my dad and the priest had cooked up, you know, to get me to do what they wanted me to do and that all these other people wanted me to do. And so it worked by God. I got pretty drunk. The other kid that stayed with me, he took a couple of belts of this wine and he got sick.
And I finished off the rest of the bottle and I was running around the church yard singing, you know, and here all these people come back and I'm hollering and hooting in the church yard there. And this priest must have thought he was God anyway because he excommunicated me from the church right there, you know. He said, take this boy home and don't ever bring him back here again. And I thought, boy, that really did the job. And it got people's attention too. And this is another thing that I liked was attention and I wasn't getting it in any way at all.
And I discovered if you're bad, you get attention. If you're good, they ignore you. So this is the way I went for a lot of my life, you know. I wanted that attention and I didn't know how to get it by being good. So I sure know how to get it by being bad. And a lot of times it took a lot of punishment being bad. I got nine broke, my nose broken nine times because I wasn't good. Maybe it was because I wasn't a good enough biter, but, or couldn't duck good enough. But, you know, I would get at a party there and, you know, these guys that are life of the party there, I would see them and I was real envious. Nobody was paying attention to me. Get back in your corner and drink your booze and keep your mouth shut. But here was some guy, he's got a bunch of people around there and I'd get real envious of this guy. And I would get in an argument with him or if he was too big, well, you know,
[00:55:05]
you know, I'd get in an argument and get in a fight and they'd forget all about him, you know, they'd be paying attention to me. Or another way I'd do it, if this guy was too big, well, I'd come up to him and accidentally spill booze all over him, you know. I couldn't hurt him any other way, you know, I'd get him that way. But I found out that if I wanted to be noticed, well, I just had to do something bad because I didn't know too much about getting attention by being good. You know, good people, they don't get noticed very much, or at least I figured they didn't. So back in my mind there, you know, it was be bad and you'll get noticed. And maybe it was by the wrong people, but I sure got noticed and the police started noticing me and magistrates started noticing me and stuff like that. And I didn't really blame it on alcohol, all these things, you know, it was just one of these things. If you ask me if I had a problem with drinking, well, I had no problem with drinking, I could drink as good as anybody, you know. There was no problem there. Some of the effects it had may have been a little bit of a problem. Some of the places I ended up may have been a little bit of a problem, but having a problem with drinking wasn't my problem.
Sometimes getting it was. But I guess I was kind of a strange drinker like a lot of people. And this is another thing about myself too. Like, I would never get drunk on Christmas Day. I don't know why, but I would never get drunk. Everybody else would be drinking on Christmas Day and not me. I had to be different. I wouldn't get drunk on Christmas Day because everybody else was. And I refused to be lonesome on Christmas Day because this is the day you're supposed to be lonesome if you have nobody else around. I was a very contrary person, you know, and I went out of my way to be this way. And if anybody tried to help me out, you know, to do anything for me, it was dangerous for them. I just wouldn't let anybody help me. They always got hurt.
People tried to straighten me out. Well, boy, I wasn't ready to be straightened out. And a guy recommends me for a promotion for a job. Well, why doesn't he mind his own business? I'll fix him. And I'd really screw things up then. But eventually, I did end up in Alcoholics Anonymous. It wasn't my fault, really. I just ended up there. I was drunk when I got there, but I decided to give it a try. And I stayed sober for a year.
And of course, I didn't do anything. I just stayed sober. And I didn't like it, you know. But I was just going to show them that I could do it anyway. And I can remember getting my up where I came from. They gave you a cake for your anniversary there. And you got up and you gave a good talk there. And I was up there thinking to myself, I wonder what they'd say if I told them I was going to get drunk in a few days. And I had planned this, you know.
I wasn't going to get drunk. No, I was going to go out and drink again. But I wasn't going to get into trouble. It was sort of, thanks a lot. You've taught me enough that I know all the pitfalls, you know. I know all the trouble you can get into. And I just have to avoid those pitfalls. And so I went out on the great experiment. And I was going to drink two beers a day for a week, you know. And I lasted three days. I had to congratulate myself because I wasn't an alcoholic. So I had to celebrate if I wanted to congratulate myself. And eventually I ended up, well, I ended up in the penitentiary that time. But all this time there was this All this time there was this, this, this, I couldn't say it was a feeling of lonesomeness. I, I felt like an outsider, a complete, no matter where I was, I was an outsider. And, and I, I, this is what, one of the things I felt. I felt I didn't belong, I didn't, I could be at a party and, and didn't belong, or I could, I could, I could be any place and I didn't belong. I, I just didn't belong.
[01:00:19]
That was all. And I didn't even belong to myself. I didn't like being alone and, and I never, I never drank alone very much. I wasn't a lone drinker or anything like that. But I would always had to have somebody to drink with, most of the time anyway. But, but, well, eventually I went out drinking again, like I said, and I had a series of, of, of drunks. My drunks weren't big long ones or anything like that. I always had means of making money, whether it was, was somebody else's money or working for it.
I always, always made money, you know, and always had enough to drink, so I never ended up in Skid Row. And I never drank long enough at any time to, to really get stuck in the hospital for my drinking. I, I got stuck in the hospital for being all bashed up for my drinking, but not, not the, the physical punishments that some people take. Mine was all up here, you know. And it got to a point where I would go on a drunk for three days and it would be three weeks before I really started shaking, or stopped shaking, you know.
And I didn't like this at all. And, and things looked blacker and blacker all the time. And, and I really did try to stay sober, but, but, but it just wouldn't work, you know, because I really didn't want to do it the, the AA way. And one of the things was, I could get up in front of a group of people and say I was an alcoholic, and that was easy because everybody else was doing it, but, but one of the questions I didn't dare ask myself at that time was, was I powerless over alcohol?
And this came about four and a half years later, I guess. I had been slipping and sliding and, and finally I woke up one morning after I had been on a fairly long drunk, about ten days, and I asked myself this question. I had to ask myself if I was powerless over alcohol. And there was only one answer. I had to answer yes to that. And I, I took the first three steps in, in about a half an hour. And here, I was a guy that shook and shivered and everything when he got up and was sick. And, and I got, I was laying in the bed in the motel there, and I got up, up out of bed, had to shave and a shower, and I had some business to do. And I went and did the business without, without a quiver or anything.
And, you know, I, I have never had a desire to drink since then. It, it was a miracle in itself. This was my miracle in AA, not, not having this. Well, as I say, I eventually got sober, but this lonesomeness was still there. And, and I tried to fill this up and, and I became a real people pleaser. I used to have a, a Grand Central, Central Station in my place to, you know, people coming and going all the time and, and the, the hungry and, and, and everything else.
And I wanted to please all these people, and, and I didn't have any time for myself. And, and I was running around all over the place, and I had a car and I was driving people all over. And, and I certainly kept myself occupied, but there was still this, this sort of lonesomeness there. And I didn't look within myself. This was one of the problems. I didn't get to know myself, and I didn't get to know myself to be able to say that I belonged. It, it was, finally it took, it took about three or four years before I, I really started to get to know myself and, and started to feel that I belonged.
I wasn't different from all these other people in AA. I wasn't different from the rest of the people in the world. And one valuable thing that I learned there too, I learned how to say no. If somebody phoned me up and said, I just gotta do something, will you help me out? I could say no and, and not feel guilty about it.
[01:05:19]
Prior to that, well, you know, if I turned anybody down, they, they say my relatives are coming in from such and such a place and they haven't got a place to stay. Could they stay at your place? And, and I wouldn't say no. I might make a couple of excuses why this wouldn't be possible, but, and I'd feel very guilty about it. But I finally learned to say no and, and in doing that, well, it certainly helped my self-esteem and, and this, this is what was, one of the things that was, was lacking in me was, was my self-esteem.
One of the things it did do for me, this, this not being able to say no and, and this lonesomeness, it made me one of the greatest 12-steppers in the world. God, I don't know how many, how many 12-step calls I've been, I was on in those first four or five years. I was always on, at somebody's beck and call, you know. And, you know, it, it was good for somebody and it didn't hurt me at all, you know. And, you know, this is one of the things, whatever, whatever you do, there's always some benefit derived by somebody.
Even if you're a bad example, well, probably somebody will benefit from this, you know. It's a, it's a, one of the things of life. And nowadays, well, I, I have my, my own, I have my group. I stick pretty close to that group and the, the people in my group are like my family, you know. I'm no longer lonesome. I have them calling me up and I have quite a number of responses that, that want to talk to me.
But one of the things I find now is I can be alone and not feel lonesome. And this came from the feeling that I belonged. I started to belong. Now, part of it came from the group because I went to that group. I started doing things. If, if your sponsor tells you, you get in there and pick up the cups and, and, and the ashtrays, empty the ashtrays and help, help stack the stair, the chairs, he isn't doing this just to be mean or anything like that or because he doesn't want to do it himself.
If you start doing these things in your group, you're going to start feeling a part of that group. You start taking some responsibilities in the group, you're going to, to start feeling a part of AA. And I don't think you really start feeling a part of AA until you take some of the responsibilities of AA. I know people that have been around for quite a while and never belonged to a group and never got a sponsor and they always brought their problems to AA members. They didn't have time to listen to other people's problems and they're not very happy. They still have this feeling of not belonging.
And, uh, uh, I have a hard time keeping a sponsor. I've, I've had, had about five of them, but I seem to outlive them all, you know, and, and, uh, uh, but I have lots of sponsees and I do have people around that are not exactly my, my, uh, sponsors, but I can talk to, you know, they're, they're more or less my peers. I can go and talk to them if I have any great problems. And one of my problems is not, nowadays, is not lonesomeness. Uh, because I know the cure for that. If I get really lonesome or feeling, feeling left out, well, I've got to go out and look for somebody to, to help out, look for somebody to talk to.
Uh, or, uh, this is one of the, one of the things that if things get sort of slow in my life, this is one of the things I pray for, you know. I don't, I don't pray for a new car. I don't pray for a new girlfriend. I don't pray for a good job or, or, uh, to win a lottery or anything like that. I pray for God's will for me and God's will is if I'm a, a member to carry the message to the best of my ability to, to the alcoholic that still suffers. And if I remember that, I'll never be lonesome because if I start getting lonesome, I, I'm not carrying the message enough or I'm not caring enough.
[01:10:22]
And as long as I keep caring, I don't think I'll ever be lonesome again. And I want to thank you for listening to me and thank you for my sobriety and I wish the same in all of you. Thank you, Jim. Uh, we only have a couple more minutes. Uh, so, uh, how about Gary G. from Roseville, California. Sorry he couldn't get to everybody, but, uh, you know, we have meetings all day. My name's Gary. I'm an alcoholic.
Thank you, God, for this day. That's the way to start out. Um, it sure is nice being here. Uh, it's like a lot of tired eyes out there. I'm one of them. It's kind of my partner. He's getting his sleep. Um, you can't give away what you don't have. And, uh, today, today I finally got a God in my life and it's through this program. I had, uh, one of those kind of religious upbringings too where everything got shoved at you and, uh, you just didn't get anything from it.
It was a lot of years of, uh, not knowing what, uh, what you were doing and what you were feeling like and why you were there and why you couldn't, uh, feel comfortable with all, everybody else. And, uh, that, um, made you feel different. And, um, then one day, uh, I just decided I had to go find a psychologist to figure out what was going on with me. And I was kind of in a hurry since I was in trouble and, uh, I had a little anger problem that really pissed me off.
And, uh, the courts told me that I had to go see somebody. And, um, so I went to see a psychologist and they said, um, they'd get right to me in maybe a month or so because they were all booked up. They, I don't think they really understood I had to see somebody maybe that day because, uh, I didn't have a lot of time left. They didn't understand that. But I heard about AA and I found out that, um, well, maybe somebody down there at that AA place down there, maybe they know some professional people, you know, maybe somebody down there probably knows a psychologist, somebody that could help me.
Because I didn't know I was alcoholic. I just thought I was going crazy. And, um, so I went down to AA and, uh, talked to this, uh, pretty rough looking old boy standing in the corner. And, uh, I asked him, do you know anybody down here that, uh, knows a psychologist or something? And he said, uh, why don't you just go sit down over there and, uh, we'll get right to you. And, uh, there was about 30 professionals in that room that I went in. And, uh, I sat down there for a while for about six months and, uh, they did a job on me. And, uh, it was real nice.
In that job, I found out some things I didn't have in my life. One was humility. I never had it. was humility. I never had it. And that humility that I have today is what keeps me in this program and keeps me on this earth, keeps me here, and keeps me coming back to Alcoholics
[01:15:07]
Anonymous, and it lets me have a God in my life and lets me be part of you. And the loneliness that I've always felt, you know it's really funny, you go in a room, I'm sure all of us have done that, just went into a place and a room full of people and just didn't feel comfortable and just didn't really feel like, well maybe I ought to go talk to that person who looks like somebody I might like or that girl or you know, and then just really not do it and just feel lonely with a whole room full of people. And you know all those feelings that you have, you can feel lonely and afraid and it's just because you don't feel good about yourself inside. And as soon as you start feeling good inside, then you can go and talk to somebody else and not be afraid to look at them straight in the eyes and maybe give them a hug and let them know that you're a human being and nothing more. And then you can be treated like one because you're treating them like one. And we don't have a lot of time today, but I'd really like to thank everybody because this convention here just shows me this whole world lets me be part of it. And I really feel great about being here. What a wonderful place it is. Thanks.
Yeah, it is great to be part of it and service is where it's at. I was scared to death when I was asked if I would secretary this meeting, but the hour was perfect. Got a bunch of crazy people in here at a crazy time and you know, God bless us all because it's you that keeps me sober. And with that, let's close with the serenity prayer. The next meeting starts in about 10 minutes and it's going to be giving it away. And I'm sorry if I didn't have a chance to call on you. So let's just join hands or arms or whatever. Here I am looking it up. I mean, God, give me a break. 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 and it does work. That concludes our program. Thanks for listening.