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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Tom I Source Review 11035 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: tom-i-love-service-story-aa-2009-archive-11035.mp3 Duration: 00:46:07
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Folks, Tom is an alcoholic and member of the Primary Purpose Group, not Debbie's, in Southern Pines, North Carolina, and my sobriety date is February the 2nd of 57, and I didn't think I'd live this long, never mind sober, and I'm grateful, and this girl is coming up 33 years, you don't look that old, I didn't think you'd reject that. But it really is good to be back here, and congratulations on the growth in the group and the stability, I keep up to date on it, Kent lays it on me all the time, he tells me every time somebody misbehaves in the group, and so I feel like I'm the posse riding in.
But it is good to be here, and I want to share, the secretary says she loves me so much she wants me to quit a whole bunch early, you know, so, well five minutes, that's a lot. But I want to do what we do, and I'll tell you what I'm like now, and I never am really sure where I'm going to go with this thing, I know what the story is, but I never know how it's going to come out, and I was a guy, like most folks that I hear, and it's a remarkable thing, when I first came here, I was in the program two years before I ever heard one single person that I identified with, now I identify with about everybody.
But I really didn't identify, everybody seemed so much different to me, I was young, and you can tell by looking at me, to be 52 years old and be only, what, 59 years old, or something like that, is remarkable in itself. But I was young, I felt totally out of place when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I've heard a lot of people talk about coming to their first meeting and had the feeling home at last, I didn't feel like home at last, I felt like I'd been put into a geriatric ward with a bad mental disability, I didn't identify with anybody, I really didn't, and I found it a very awkward and clumsy place to be.
I didn't identify with people, as I said, the last two years before I ever identified with anybody. They all sounded different, not just because they were older, but they just sounded different. And the thing that finally helped me to identify was not so much the stories, those were important, but there were a couple of things. There were two things that were tremendously significant in my getting to the point, which I like to visit, because I think without it, there is no recovery.
You know, the foundation is about getting to the point where I know I'm really sure enough got this thing called alcoholism. And what happened to me was that the book was tremendously important to me. The third chapter, the way it approaches alcoholism, is I think just absolutely excellent. You know, I want to read Doc's opinion and stuff about the weird mind and all this kind of stuff and losing control and all that.
None of that really radiated much. But when I got to the book and saw that simple definition, that we alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control their drinking, that was something I could connect with. Because there's a lot of difference between losing control of your drinking and some of the Wild West stories you hear here. I mean, somebody says they married the same woman nine times or something.
Well, anyway, you know what I mean. It just gets wild sometimes. And that thing of bringing it down to the heart of the matter, that we alcoholics are folks who have lost the ability to control their drinking. Well, when I saw that and I could look back on my life, it was obvious that I wasn't controlling anything. So that was a good start in accepting the fact that I truly had this illness. The thing that secured it for me, and I mean nailed it solidly in place, was when I got to the fourth step.
And up to that time, I really didn't truly believe I had an illness called alcoholism. What I was really hanging on to was when I would listen to speakers tell their stories. And I'm sure they knew what they were saying, but what I thought they were saying was that they were alcoholic because when they drank, they got in trouble. And I thought, well, my God, if that's what this is, I've had that all my life.
Man, I've been in trouble all my life, never sober. I've never been in jail sober in my life. Well, to visit, folks, I've been there a few times. But I never had, never had been in trouble, never committed a criminal act that I know about.
[00:05:02]
Never deliberate or intentional. And so I had an awful hard time after that. And when I got to that fourth step and took a look at what my life had been and had become, I got to that point that's so vital, that's so well laid out in our book, where I accepted at the core of my being, after looking at that life and what had happened in it and how it was driven, I accepted at the core of my being that I'm an alcoholic.
Not a bad drunk. Not a street thug. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a guy who if I take a drink, I cannot predict what I'll do. I'm in no way. I don't know how long I'll drink, what I'll drink. I drank hydraulic brake fluid one time, for God's sake. Now, I didn't mean to. But you folks won't faint if I take my coat off, will you? No. Good. Good. I am if I don't. Thank you, boss. I really didn't intend to drink that hydraulic brake fluid.
Some enterprising Yankee, I think, was bootlegging, and he wasn't too choosy about what he bootlegged. And he sold me some moon made with brake fluid. It worked well. I was locked up tighter than a drum for a week. And I never went back for any more. So I wasn't a very choosy type of guy. And so when I looked and saw what my life was and saw the role that alcohol played, man, I knew that if I wasn't an alcoholic, I was a pure nutcase.
I knew that alcoholism, and I accepted at the core of my being that I'm a fellow who has an illness called alcoholism. I don't have a habit of drinking too much or getting in trouble too much. Important to him because he said this is his fifth 30 days. It'll be the last 30 days. Yeah. Go for 60. Yeah. All right. And that helped me a great deal to get down to that fundamental understanding that there is something about me that's different when it comes to alcohol from people who are not.
If I take a drink, I can't predict what I'll do. And what happened that day when I got through that inventory, I had those kind of floating things, and I rationalized that I had a drinking problem, stuff like that. But what happened was that I accepted at the core of my being that I am flat beat. I can't drink. And I can't tell you how valuable that was. If you've had a similar experience, I don't need to tell you because you know.
But what that did was put it to rest. And from the moment that I fully accepted that I was powerless over alcohol, that I'm an alcoholic, I have never doubted that for one second 51 years later. Never doubted it for one second. Because I admitted at the core of my being I'm beat. And it plays in the book, in the same place, third chapter, it says that we learned we had conceded to our innermost self, conceded to our innermost self, that I am alcoholic, that I have this illness.
That's the first step in recovery. Because that changed the whole thing about what my situation was in AA. I wasn't sitting there speculating and weighing things anymore. I knew fundamentally that I was in the right place and that there was no latitude for me. And, man, that has served me well. What it did was give me a good hold on long-term sobriety. So that I could see this as a life mission, not just momentary release.
And I can't tell you how valuable that was. Because there are many times when we were talking about, I keep pointing to him because we've been out there and all chatting. And what that gave me was something more than just sort of going from one crisis to another and fighting the monkeys. And to start resolving the fact that I want to stay sober for the rest of my life. And that's what came out of that.
And that I can do that if I will practice these principles one day at a time. So that gave me a fundamental grounding in Alcoholics Nonviolence. And it was tremendously important. Because there were many times in those early years when I would come to a place, and you probably have too, where the whole world would just look dark. And I'd think, my God, I just can't get through this stuff. But I learned two important things that went along with that fundamental grounding in who I am and what I am.
[00:10:05]
Two things. One is when I get in a jam like that, it's pray. Just pray. And the other thing, I pray as if it all depends on God. But then I go to work as if it all depends on me. And the other two words that I used in that prayer, I haven't had that for a long time, was hang on. Hang on. Now that is not eloquent philosophy, but that is great reality. Hang on. Because I didn't have to figure out any Freudian complex on that.
That means hang on, buddy, you're going down. And those simple little things helped me through more crisis than you can imagine. And gave me that stability that I wanted. I want to mention just a couple of things that I know were formidable to me when I first came in. They were, I guess, what I would call barriers. Barriers to alcoholism. I mean, to recovery from alcoholism. And let me just say, you might have encountered some of the same.
You know, I was 24 years old, knew nothing about alcoholism, and when I started looking at the recovery, you know, I had a huge barrier in that I didn't look or sound like the other members. I'm the youngest guy there. I was the youngest member in every meeting I attended for years. Man alive, when I was in North Carolina and a guy came in younger than me, I wanted to kiss him. And I was so glad to see him.
I was so tired of people patting me on the head and telling me how lucky I was to be an alcoholic. And I was, yeah, right. Felt like I was in a geriatric ward, for God's sake. And look at my life and say how lucky I am. You bet I'm lucky. And so that thing of lack of, you know, we talk about fellowship. When you're sitting here, you don't identify with the soul in the room. That's isolation, you know.
That's not fellowship. That's isolation. And that's a miserable place to be, to not be able to identify with the other folk. Ignorance was a huge, huge barrier for me. I knew absolutely nothing about alcoholism. Nothing. I never heard of alcoholism. You know, I've heard of alcoholism. People throw the word at me. But I had no more knowledge of that than a man in the moon. And what I learned in the book, you know, except for those real bottom line kinds of things.
But that ignorance was profound in that I just did not understand. And when I would hear people get into the complexities of the illness, it would just leave me. And so that was a huge barrier for me, of just getting through the ignorance and starting to understand the language. The feeling of being different. I know nobody here has ever felt different. But I felt absolutely different. I just didn't identify with those folk.
Unworthiness was an awfully important thing for me. And I had good reason to be. You know, I was a guy that not only wrecked his own life, but I wrecked a bunch of other lives in the process. I was a guy that was responsible in a drunken blackout for ending the lives of two people. And when you're dealing with something like that, you can see why unworthiness would be a formidable barrier. You know, in the aftermath of that, and then trying to find some place to stand, I felt guilty for breathing.
Felt guilty for breathing. It's that total sense of guilt, overwhelming guilt, that I was unworthy to be doing anything. And what a huge barrier that was. The feeling of unworthiness. A huge barrier for me was I wasn't sure I wanted to live. Bottom line, I wasn't sure I wanted to live. I would give it an effort, but underneath I always had that overwhelming sense of guilt and shame and remorse for what I'd done, and I wasn't even sure that I wanted to make the fight to even stay alive.
And so those are formidable barriers. You know, when you start looking at the new life, that old life is a real anchor, eh? It's a real anchor. And so those were real, real, real barriers. Knowing nothing about alcoholism was a real barrier. Being the youngest guy in the group, it seemed like I was the youngest guy in the world. A huge barrier. And I always felt like a wimp, you know, around those old goats that were in the program then.
And I got so tired of people oohing over me. You know, I mean, I know they, but God knows, you know, I'm trying to fit in and be one of the players, and people act like I'm somebody's kid, you know, they come over, my, my, how nice to see a young fellow here, and yeah, right, yeah, and God, what a thrill to be
[00:15:05]
here. But it's a real barrier, you know, to getting through that, and I know what time a guy, early on, a guy said, uh, was trying to pat me on the head and tell me how lucky I was, and I said, yeah, boy, I really am lucky, I'm on a roll, and, uh, I'm sitting in a penitentiary, and he's telling me how fortunate I am, I'm looking back at a life that would have been better had it never happened, and he's patting me on the head and saying, my, my, son, you are very fortunate to be in the situation you're in, do you realize that at your age, you could look forward to as much as 50 years of sobriety?
And when he said that, his eyes kind of rolled back in his head, you know, he was in rapture about that, and, uh, and while he was in rapture, and hallelujah, I was saying to myself, my God, what if it works, what if it works, I'm going to be sitting here innocent as a lamb, and I'm going to get sucked into this dude, and I'm going to be in, it's your enough geriatric case, never get out of here, and I'll tell you something now, if you're new and you're a little uncertain, you better get out while you can, because if you stay here too long, man, we get our talons in you, you're had, you're had, that's what happened to me, and so I just stayed too long, but those were real barriers, they were just real barriers, and I was really fortunate in that, that I was introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous in an excellent group of Alcoholics Anonymous, I'd like to see a well-formed group like this, remember me from chat sessions, you know, that is not my deal, and, uh, I just got a thing in the mail, I shared it with a couple of people in this room, of all the stuff, you know how you get stuff on the computer all the time with profundities and wisdom and all that, I got something in the mail that struck me like nothing has for a long, long time, it was a guy wrote up something, he sponsored a fella, and he wrote up a thing, he titled it, You Don't Have to Drink to Die, and what he's talking about, he describes standing at a funeral, and he was burying a man named Dave, I believe, they were burying this fella, and he had sponsored him, and he described the guy, he said he had been sober 20 years, and NAA, cause a little misstatement, but that's okay, I understand his point, and NAA for 30, that doesn't match up right, but anyway, I know what he's talking about, you know, he'd been hovering in the halls for 30 years, and he had struggled to hang on to 20 years, and that's what he described, he said he was an edgy guy, but he was around NAA, and he hung on for 20 years, and then he hung himself, and God knows how often that happens, how often that happens, when people in early recovery just like me, this new life did not seem comfortable, it did not seem inviting, it didn't seem, and just because I stopped drinking doesn't mean alcoholism stops, and his whole point was that those devils that drove us while we were drinking stay alive, and not drinking is not the finish line for success, it's the starting line for recovery, and that struck me like nothing I've seen for a long, long time, and it struck me because I've seen so many actual cases of that, have participated with people who wound up doing that, I worked with a man one time, fabulously successful businessman, good leader, big strapping guy, looked like a winner from any aspect except when you look close, and he came into A stage sober 12 years, and just like that guy, he hung on for 12 years, and then he didn't hang himself, but he dropped out, he got drunk, he went back to the medication that eased his illness, and he went back out, and I happened to be in the group that he was in, and he was coming back over and over and over, and he was a proud successful businessman, and I know he had to suck it up every time he came back, and he would last a short time, and then he would go out again, and then he got into one of these sort of, these high powered religious things that, I've never been in one of them, but I see these things, these sort of high bore type of things where folks are just getting wildly in love with something, and he did that, he got into that, and he helped a guy named Jim Baker build a couple of mansions, and he hung on with that for 22 years, and then he drank again, and then he tried to come back again, and
[00:20:06]
he finally gave up and drove his big long Cadillac out into the woods and shot himself, and that's the dilemma of recovery, of understanding that stopping drinking is the starting point, not the finishing point, and so that little experience of going through and coming to some grips with reality about what it is that I have was a tremendously important thing for me to learn about the commitment and what it is, what's the nature of the battle, I don't have options to play with that, I'm playing with my life, and so it gave me that desire to stay on. I'll tell you one other thing about that that, I didn't mean to talk about this, but what the heck, let's talk about it. I've been for several years now, I've been looking, I don't know about you, but I get absolutely concerned about the high turnover rate of people who come into Alcoholics and Alcoholism, it sometimes looks to me like we've got more people going out than coming in, and that concerns me, because I want to be an effective helper of people, and so when I see something like that, I want to understand it, and so I started looking around, what is it that causes so many people, like I was able to hang on through the mist, barely, into a new life, but why is it so many people can't quite catch that, and so I started looking, and rather than demonize the person that's in and out the door, that's the illness talking, rather than demonize that, I want to question, are we giving that person what they need to hang on to, and so I started looking, and I saw some stuff some friends of mine were doing, and they were taking people through the book, and that was not done back when I came in AA, but it had cropped up, and I had some friends doing that, and they told me that they were having great success with it, and so one day I was at a conference with a good buddy of mine, and he did that, I said, tell me what you do, and he told me about how he went about it, and I said, well, I'm a kind of a visual guy, show me what you do, so in a hotel hallway, we pulled a few chairs together, and just grabbed a few drunks, and said, hey, sit in on something here, you know, he said, it's not hard to get a crowd in AA, it just looks like you're doing something nobody knows about, yeah, let me get in on that, and here they come, and so he just opened a book, and picked a line, therefore, we started upon a personal inventory, that was step four, I just happened to turn to that, and what he did was, and I do this routinely now, I almost don't know how to read the book like it's written, I make it personal, so when I'm reading that, therefore, I started upon a personal inventory, this was step four, a business which takes no regular inventory, and so on, and what he's doing, and he said, that's what we do, simple as that, we read the book, and then ask two questions, one of the questions is never, what do you think, makes no difference what you think, that's not the question, do you identify or relate to that, it's amazing the difference that makes, because I identified practically everything in there, well, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I got some sense, and so I could tell what he was talking about, he's trying to get identification so that the process starts to become, and he said that's the whole objective, the story of recovery in this book needs to become my story of recovery, and so that's where I read the book, that's where I take people through the book, I did that because I was concerned about that revolving door thing, and I still am, but by golly, my notion when I'm concerned about something, I don't just worry, I start thinking solutions, I want to do something about it, and that's why I was doing that, when I got that, I took a guy that I sponsored, a few guys, really, that I sponsored, and said, you guys want to go through the book and do the steps, and everybody wanted to do it, I said, all right, we'll do it, and then you can bring somebody if you like, I had no clue who would be coming, I mean, I didn't care who was coming, if they're alcoholics, we want to get well, that's all I cared, and so I thought that was all I cared, but the night came, we were going to start, and here they came, about 15 folks, and one of them, now this is California, you can't get too conservative on this thing right here, but one of them was a woman, I just flat didn't like her, and she didn't like me more than I didn't like her, and so it was mutual, and
[00:25:05]
she was a brilliant woman, a hardcore atheist, and proud of it, boy, she loved to debate that, and she was from one of the Northeastern universities, brilliant gal, and she came in that door and my heart just dropped, I said, oh my God, I'm going to spend the rest of this year debating this yo-yo, and I mean, it's an open door, I can't say, get out of here, you don't belong, and so she came in, and I said, Jesus, that is just too much, and it's funny how people will find their place, she went over and sat down between two other aggravated cases, and they just kind of fit, so we started going through the book, and slowly but surely, I watched that girl start to warm up, amazing thing, if I would have been taking her head on, we would have been fighting, I guarantee you, we would have been fighting, but the book kind of led her through it, and we were doing it just this way, everything is personal, not what do you think, what do you identify, and I watched recovery born in that woman, couldn't believe it, the other two yo-yos too, I mean they were all three just sort of getting to be a happy trio over there, I wasn't sure what they were up to, but there they were, and so we got to the third step of prayer, and I'd like to tell you it was spontaneous, but I believe in spontaneity, particularly if it's well planned, so we spontaneously ended the meeting on the third step of prayer, she was, I told you, she was a profound, proud atheist, so I told the group, I said we're going to close tonight, not with our Father, we're going to close with third step prayer, and I'll give you three options, you can either take our hands and join us in doing the third step prayer, or you can hold our hands while we do it, or you can step back and watch us do it, I won't tell you what she said, but later on she told me what she called me, under her breath, I mean she didn't attack, but she'd tell you dirty, rotten, so and so, and so on, well now she had a dilemma didn't she, she's in the deal, she's feeling the juices, she feels a sense of belonging, she feels a connection, and here's some yo-yo trying to push her into deep water, and so she's got a dilemma, I didn't, and so she told me later, and I didn't know what to do, she stepped in, never the same gal, now it wasn't a burning bush thing, I mean she didn't have some glowing experience like we did, but she was never the same person, because she lit up, instead of that hard shell to have to get through with all the barriers like I'm talking about, you know she opened up and this thing started to be, if anybody had told me this would have happened, I swear to God, I would have never believed it, she became my backup, if I had to be away, she was the one that I would turn the group over to, I still couldn't believe it, and right now, she is without doubt the warmest, most genuine woman in my part of the state, if I've got a female in town that's looking for some contact, or I've got a case with some females in a group or whatever, she's my go-to person, that's who I go to, and I'm never disappointed, amazing thing, amazing thing, I'll tell you what's equally amazing, if I'm looking for a solution to the revolving door, now that's not a magic bullet, but I think it is to this extent, that in the opening of chapter 5, it says, rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path, Bill said if he'd ever changed anything in the book, it would have been that, never have we seen a person fail, we had 15 people, aggravated cases, including her, and now, many years later, every single one of them is sober.
Now I don't think that's a magic bullet, I don't think it's a miracle cure, I believe it's evidence that if I stay quite tight to these principles and give it my best shot, there is no room for failure. So there's 15 troops there, and so I really became thoroughly thoroughly convinced that if you stay in those principles, there's just not much room for it. And all of those folks that went through that are leaders in the program now, a lot of them in my own home group.
And so, that was the kind of thing that happened for me.
[00:30:04]
I'll tell you what I've seen, and this really isn't what I meant to talk about, but this is what we… do it. What I've seen, I don't know what you've seen, but I hope you're concerned about these kinds of things, because we do get enormous movement through Alcoholics Anonymous. And what I've found is that when I'm working with people going through the steps, if I lose them, it'll tend to be at the point of six and seven.
Most people can get through the part of agonizing over the agony, you know, yeah, I've got that, I might talk about my last operation forever. That's fairly simple to deal with. And then the causes and conditions in the inventory. Most people are fairly, don't like it, but most people can plow through that thing, get insight about what's going on with this thing, what makes me travel in such a funny kind of way.
And that's great. You know, the way I look at steps, the first three are not about recovery at all. All they set the foundation. And I think the first three steps is where we put a tourniquet on the drinking, where we establish a foundation from which recovery can grow. That's my belief. You know, the thing about AA is that this is, each one of us has our hold on this program. And we are all free to stop at whatever point we're willing to settle for.
I know people who have never done the steps who died sober. I've known a lot more who didn't. But I've known many people who didn't do the steps. I've known a lot of people who do the first three or do through the inventory. It's what you're willing to settle for. And you know, if I'm willing to settle for just survival, like the guy who hung on and hung himself, that's what he was doing with surviving.
If I'm willing to settle for that, that's my business. And so what I find in that foundation in the first three, and then getting to causes and conditions in four and five, and opening up to human, and then a disturbing thing occurs. Six says basically, you want to get well or don't you? You want to correct those things that drive you so weirdly or don't you? It's put up or shut up time. One place in the book it refers to is the steps that separate the men from the boys and the girls from the women.
And I found that to be absolutely true, absolutely true. Because at that point, you're through with the self-analysis. You're through with the pondering the dilemma. You're through with examining what's wrong with me. And you've got some clear things there on what has to happen. If I don't get those things straightened out, if I don't get those defects dealt with and the overwhelming guilt that I carry around for what I've done for my life, if I don't deal with that, it's going to be bad news.
And so six says, you're entirely ready to have God remove these defects of character. And a lot of times, people are like me, when I was faced with that, I didn't jump on that. I mean, I wanted to get better, but I didn't want to get pure. I mean, I wasn't interested in pure. And that said, all defects of character, good Lord. Not Mother Teresa, Father Teresa or somebody. But that's scary, because this is now quit moaning and groaning, and let's get to work and do the things that it's going to take to remove these things, and then ask God to help us remove these shortcomings.
And I don't, you know, I've never had God pluck out a defect of character. What I had God do was help us put the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th steps in there. Because I think that's the answer to prayer, you know. And so when I'm ready and I truly want to change, that's where I lose people. Because when people start getting into deeper water, they get scared, and they get afraid they're going to get too good too quick, just like I was, and will opt out.
And we've got tons of meetings where you can go for the rest of your life and never be challenged to do any of that. If you just want to survive, fine. Don't drink, hang out, and chat about it. That's what that is. But if you want to be free, if you really want to breathe free and deep and be able to think about something other than yourself and survival, and to have wonderful, wonderful rewarding experiences, you've got to go on to the new life.
And so 6th and 7th, pivotal point for me, and that's where I lose my troops, is when
[00:35:00]
I lose them. And then 8th and 9th is about righting the wrongs. I fully believe that, I don't believe it, I know it, that if those defects are not dealt with, I'll drag them for the rest of my life. And I've never seen a defect, I mean an amendment that could not be made. I mean I've seen some that couldn't be made immediately, but they can either be made directly, indirectly, but they can be dealt with.
I'll tell you a story, even with that, where I caused the death of two people, these steps were adequate for that. And it would take too long to walk you through, but I'd be glad to walk you through if anybody's got deep trouble like that thing. These steps are adequate even for that, and I was able to make full and direct amends to both the families of the victims that I accidentally hit, and I would have lived with that guilt forever, with a deep, dark secret, but I was able to make amends, and those steps led me through it, so that I could take my place in this world, and in a ton of other ways.
I'll just give you one quick example of what happens with amends that kind of goes with that guy that sort of hung on 20 years, hung himself. I'm a guy that, I like to hang around by the door, because I've got another vulture back there. Before he comes in, I bet you he'll have him, and what I do, I kind of watch the door, and if I see somebody I don't know, I'm going to get my eyes on that sucker, and if I can get to him, I'm going to grab him.
I mean, I don't want to scare him, but I mean, if you see somebody rushing at you, it's a little scary. In fact, one night, a guy came in, and I think he knew me, and knew my track record, and I started for him, and he bolted out the door, and started running. Well, I got behind him, and started chasing him. Now, here's a spiritual giant chasing a, well, I know it looked like a zoo, but I never did catch that sucker.
He was quick on his feet, and he got away, but anyway, that thing, I don't want to maybe talk about that. Oh, the guy with the deal, and tragically, I didn't catch that guy, and two months later, he shot himself in his kitchen. So it's a tough, tough deal, and this one guy I was going to mention that came in my group one night while I was watching the door, looking for fresh meat, and he came in, and most people at the first meeting don't look like they just won the Nobel Prize.
I mean, you look a little hanged dog, you know. This guy was the living dead. He was the walking dead, you know, and you could tell just how morose and sad, and I knew him. He was one of those social butterfly types, you know, he didn't have a group, he just floated around, sucked a little something here and there, and I knew that, and confirmed later, he'd been sober 16 years. And so I went over, and you've got to be a little careful about how you charge in on people.
You've got to have enough sensitivity. Some people need some encouragement, need an arm around them. Some others say you need to say, come on, let's get over here and let's do this. It's just you've got to gauge that thing, and you tend to know how. And so I just went to him, and I bought him a cup of coffee, free, and he took the bait, and he started following me around. He was following me around like a puppy.
And everywhere I'd go, he's right there, you know, going right with me in my shadow. I'd sit on the front row, you've got to open seats up there, going up to the front row, and he'd come sit right beside me. I bet he'd never been on the front row before, and he'd sit there and ask me if I'd work with him. I said, of course I will, and he said, what do you want me to do? I said, well, I'll tell you what, I'll take you to prison with me, and he said, really?
I said, yeah, yeah, I'll be glad to. I'll take you out there, and it'll get your mind on something that you see you're not the only guy in the world who's got some problem. And so we went out there, and he just fell in love with me. He was a real wealthy guy. He had a Mercedes longer than this room. And he drove me up, I don't know, a high roller. I'm rolling up here in a Mercedes with a chauffeur.
And he parked the thing, and one night the officer came in, and he thought it was my car. Well, I don't think he thought it was my car. But anyway, he tapped me on the shoulder and said, Tom, you got a Mercedes? I said, yeah, but it's jacked up in the garage, it won't run. And he said, no, this is not the one, this is a big, long Mercedes. And I said, yes, it is. And so I told him, now, here's a guy that's still living dead, eh, he's a walking corpse, that you could have got a response out of him.
And I said to him, hey, your lights are on on the car, go turn them off. He said, I don't want to leave the meeting. I said, well, I don't want to walk home.
[00:40:04]
And he said, it's okay, I've got good battery. I said, if you don't get that thing, man, you're going to call me a cab or something like that. So anyway, we got it. But see, the difference, you know, when you start getting hold of something, you know. And what I noticed about this guy, he would cry about everything. I mean, you could read the steps, and he'd cry. Tell a joke, he'd cry. And I knew there was something going on, you know, so I just, I didn't want to just plow right into him, because he was obviously a pretty shell-shocked guy.
And finally, he said, when he asked me if I'd help him, he said, I've got a pretty bad situation. And he did. He had a son that had killed himself already, and he had another son that looked like a good candidate. And he wanted, he got sober, he wanted to be, do something with his son. And so here's a son, 42 years old, with whom he'd had no communication since he was a child. He might as well have been on the moon for what he meant to that family.
And so he felt like a dog, appropriately. And so he ran it down to me, and I said, well, let me think about it a little bit. And so what I told him, I'm not always this brutal, but when we got through running it down to him, and I thought about it, I said, let me tell you what I want you to do, and do it exactly like I'm telling you. Buy a ticket to that state. It's a western state, not California, but it's a western state.
I said, you buy a ticket to that state, going out one day and coming back the next. And you go out there with one purpose in mind. That's to set up a two-hour meeting with your son, and you make direct amends to that fellow. Don't go out hunting ducks and cook them or something. Don't get a family reunion. Get that boy and take care of that mission. Well, Alec never got him to go, I swear to God. He was scared, scared to death.
And it finally got him on the plane, got to that state, and he called me back. He said, I'm coming back. I said, why? He said, he doesn't want to see me. I said, how do you know? He said, well, I just know. And I said, no, no. No, no, no. I said, I tell you what, you either stay and see that boy, because if you come back, you better not come back to North Carolina. You better go somewhere else. And I said, you call him.
You tell him you want two hours, and that boy will come over there and you do those amends. And he did. He did that. And this is the healing process. This is recovery, where you start to put life back together and have things happen and become a functioning human, a responsible person. And so he went there and did that, and he didn't need a plane to fly back. He could have flown without it. That summer, that fellow brought his whole family to vacation with this guy.
And that's the thing, it's not only a matter of survival, it's a matter of the new life. And so when somebody detours out and just starts getting into that sort of survival mode, my God, what do you miss? What do you miss? And then, I didn't even know I was going to talk about steps, and she's fidgeting because she told me to quit or she was going to throw a chair. I'll just close up on this notion.
I mean, it's just the way I practice it, but the way I read the book is the way it's laid out. You have the three basic things and the three basic groups in a thing. First three steps, which is a solid foundation, the spiritual base that the program grows from. And four through seven is about finding those causes and conditions and deciding to be rid of them. Eight and nine are about freedom. Those are the freedom steps, where I get rid of those anchors I've been dragging for years.
And then 10, 11, and 12 is how to put this program to work in our lives. A lot of people think those are called maintenance steps. What a cheap shot. Those are not maintenance steps. They're tremendous action steps. What they are is about getting your mind off yourself. Just like it says at the end of The Promises, you know that little deal, I don't know at the start of it. If you have been painstaking about this phase of our development, then it's talking about immense.
If you've been painstaking, you'll be amazed before you're halfway through, just like that boy was. And then it reads all that stuff. And then from that point on, now this is Tom Ivester's view, didn't make it right, but pretty close to right. From that point on, once you get through those promises, everything in the program starts with me and ends with others. None of it is focused on self. It's about getting ourselves in condition to be of maximum service and learning to have useful purpose.
How to be effective, just like doing that big book thing, that's just a way of being effective. And that's what makes the adventure of recovery come alive, where I can really get caught
[00:45:03]
up in that fourth dimension that you can get rocketed to. it's something else. You know, I'm really glad y'all cued me to talk about this because I've been wanting to hear that for a long time. But I guess the thing is, you know, there's plenty of bad news. My news is if you're new, and my buddy is new, and I want you to grab hold of this sucker and ride it to a brand new life. And everybody here who's in those sort of uncertain pages, is this thing going to work? Is it a real shit deal or not? You can take this to the bank. I don't care what your dilemma is. This program will make that right. Not only make it right, but it'll open up a way of life, if you let it do it, that's second to none. Where the adventure of life, we call it being rocketed to a fourth dimension. So if you do that, fasten your seatbelt, because you just don't know what's going to happen. I wish everybody well. Thanks.