Audio
About this recording
- Topic
- Big Book Study Disc 5 Scottsdale Arizona
- Speaker
- Debbie D. and Kent D
- Date
- 2017-03-31
Transcript
Source: Debbie D. and Kent D – Big Book Study Disc 5 Scottsdale Arizona – 2017-03-31.mp3 File: debbie-d-and-kent-d-big-book-study-disc-5-scottsdale-arizona-2017-03-31.mp3 Duration: 00:59:59
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Gentlemen, if you'll please take your seats, we'll get started. Okay, great. Welcome back to our afternoon. We may have more coming who are just not quite back from lunch yet or whatever, but we'll go ahead and get started. This will be about one hour because we know about 45 minutes from now your lunch is going to sink in, and we're going to need a little coffee, need a little jazz them up break. So we're going to do this for about one hour to just give you an idea.
So we've moved from six and seven, and now using that inventory again is our amends, step eight and nine is what we're going to cover in this session. And in the Big Book, eight and nine are pretty well intertwined with each other. It's not like as clear as in the Twelve and Twelve where it's step eight and step nine. But what, and it's almost kind of hard to separate the two, but I'm going to try to do that.
Even though I might read out of the Big Book, I really do like to go into the Twelve and Twelve with a sponsee so we're clear on what this eighth step list is about, and that the preparation we have to make became willing to make amends to them all, and not just rush in. I've certainly had friends share that they, and me, that I've had to make amends for making amends. We don't want to do that. It's a really important act.
It is. In eight, I'm making the list. I'm using that inventory. Who have I harmed? And sometimes I'm not maybe clear. So what's a harm? Oh, kicking someone in the shins, yeah, that's a harm. Ripping somebody off is a harm. But maybe there's something a little more to it than that. And then the Twelve and Twelve, it gives a beautiful statement about identifying that. On page 80 in the Twelve and Twelve, it says, first person, I'm reading this as, I might ask myself what I mean when I say that I have harmed other people. What kinds of harm do people do one another anyway?
To define the word harm in a practical way, I might call it the result of instincts in collision, which cause physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual damage to people. That's a great guide for me in looking back at how I've harmed someone. There are going to be people that feel they have been harmed. They don't owe that person amends. Those are case-by-case scenarios. I have certainly come—women have come to me that have been abused or molested as children.
That has not been my experience. In many cases, after reviewing it, if they're still troubled by doing that, I have them talk to others who have had that experience because I have not. It would be foolish of me to think that I can say, I know what you're talking about. I don't. I've never been there. We can't possibly all have the same experiences, or every experience. So this is why I listen closely to your stories, so I can say, you know what? I've not had that experience, but so-and-so has.
Why don't you talk with her? How did she move past it? Because that's what I'm listening for, is how they had it, but went beyond that, got free of it. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time on those because, again, I'm not coming from experience. But with that, I got this from Clint H. many years ago when he was sharing his experience, having been, at the time he was probably 35 years sober, but he said at 25 years sober is the first time he had really taken the 12 steps.
He'd been active in service for all those years, but had never taken the steps himself. So he did that through another group, and he got so many tools. So he's passing on through a workshop similar to this the tools. And when he got to Step Eight, the tool I took away from it is that
[00:05:01]
each person that I owe amends to goes on an index card, and I put their name on that card and identify what is the harm I did to that person, so that I'm always on the ready to make that amend. Running that by your sponsor is a good thing because sometimes we can minimize what we owe amends for, and other times we can say, And I also am so sorry about the 1989 earthquake. Okay, we can— We can go over the top of responsibility.
So let's get real. What's the harm that you've done to that person? I know that I've had heard someone say, they've come to me actually, and they've said, You know, I used to gossip about you all the time. And I don't—well, you know, like I need to know this, right? And so my response is, Well, I'm sorry that you felt you need to do that. Has anything changed? Do you feel better now? And they say, Well, I don't do it anymore.
Well, thank you, you know. I don't know how necessary those are. My experience of receiving that has not been necessary, okay? So I take amends very purposefully. I don't think they're a toss, get ready to toss them and I'm sorry. No, I don't think so. So making my list, being prepared as to what this looks like is vital. With that, however, the preparedness for me comes forgiveness. I must go into step nine 100% in forgiveness of this person, because I know, again, I said earlier, when we got parts, I know mine's much smaller than yours.
And what's required is that they have no part. It's my inventory and my spiritual freedom, my emotional freedom from the bondage I have put myself in. To that emotional attachment to that person, and most of the time that's going to be that negative emotional attachment. So I've got my list. I'm prepared to make amends. And one of the things that I pass on to the gals is how to go into preparing that forgiveness part.
For those of you who have the daily reflections, I love that. I enjoy reading that every morning. My favorite page is on forgiveness, and it happens to be easy to remember. Step eight and step nine jointly beautifully combined are on August 9th, eighth month, ninth day. Easy to remember where to find this. And it says, the title, you know, there's the little something, some quotation, and then the person sharing.
So the quotation is, dot dot dot, of all persons we had harmed, next line, dot dot dot, and became willing to make amends to them all. The author writes two paragraphs. One of the key words in the eighth step is the word all. I'm not free to select a few names for the list and to disregard the others. It is a list of all persons I have harmed. I can see immediately that this step entails forgiveness, because if I'm not willing to forgive someone, there is little chance I will place his name on the list.
Before I placed the first name on my list, I said a little prayer. Now I'm going to do a disclaimer. This is not a little prayer. It may be short in words, but it is not a little prayer. I forgive anyone and everyone who has ever harmed me at any time and under any circumstances. End quote. Ha! I mean, that is like everybody. That's unconditional forgiveness, right? Can I rise to that? That's a huge spiritual muscle you're going to start working.
The next paragraph. So if that wasn't enough, it is well for
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me to contemplate a small but very significant two-letter word every time I say the Lord's Prayer. The word is as. I ask, quote, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. End quote. In this case, as means in the same manner. I'm asking to be forgiven in the same manner that I forgive others. As I say this portion of the prayer, if I am harboring hatred or resentment, I'm inviting more resentment when I should be calling on the spirit of forgiveness.
This thing just knocks me every time powerfully. It really resonates to me. And so while I had a number of amends to make. From my drinking days, from my sober days, I'm only going to give you the one that I learned the most from, and that was my stepmother that I referred to in the inventory. So, in my experience of listening to Fifth Steps, there's always one amend you don't want to make, you know, and this was mine.
And I knew many times in the first seven years, I got 90%, but I knew the 10 was vital. I had to go in with an unconditional forgiveness from here out, and I got 90%. I, as I went through the steps in real, for real, it seemed like it, seven years, I went to a conference, and I was going into the speaker, a Saturday night speaker meeting, and if you said, So, when are you going to make that amends to your stepmother?
My response would have been something like, Well, it'll be soon. She's on the list. She rose to the top of the list, so to speak. The guy that night's talking about being 30 years sober, having just come back from Florida, make his amends to his father at 30 years sober, and he says—now, of course, he's on fire, right? So now every one of us has to get our amends in shape, right? So, kind of what he's implying.
And he goes, If you have an amend to make, do it while they're still alive, and don't wait till they die and say you wish you would have. Boom. That's all I heard him say that night. Exiting that, if someone had said, Say, when are you going to make amends to your stepmother? I would have said, Now is the time. I knew that. That was the final push. So that's in like November. And now I'm going to just say that I must—I did not do the best amends. I did not run this letter by my sponsor.
This is seven years sober. It's, what, 1983. There's no cell phones or internet. She is a very secretive person. I had found and located a post office box. I don't even know what her last name is anymore. She'd remarried, et cetera, et cetera. So I write this letter, and some of it was good, some of it probably not so good. I don't exactly remember the letter, but I mail it off. A month later, because I am listed in the phone book with full correct name, address, contact—that's when people used phone books, or called information—I answer the phone this January, and I heard her voice on the line.
And the first thing I noticed was my gut didn't go— I thought, I'm free of this. I did not know that would ever be, because like I mentioned earlier, that was sort of that dark power. That resentment was that dark power that I had about somebody. So she started with— You know, I don't, I got your letter, and I really don't even know what you were talking about. I don't even remember those things. But what I do remember is… She had a laundry list of stuff that she remembered of harms I had done her.
of harms I had done her.
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What I learned from that is, number one, is that to go about making amends from that point on, the lesson was to identify my regret of the known harms I had done, adding, and any others I've caused that I don't know about. Because my letter implied, well, these were the only things I did. And so that was first lesson. Second was asking, Is there anything you would like to say? Now, the reason for that is because this amend is not a guilt reliever.
It is to correct. To amend is to correct. Have I corrected the behavior before I've even made the amends of what I'm addressing of harms I've caused you? Have I even made any changes in that area? Or will this simply be an I'm sorry, a stupid little Band-Aid, thinking that that's okay to do and do it again later on? So my words mean nothing. So this is why I regret that I caused this harm. I regret what I recall doing, things like that.
Is there anything else that I have done? And then listening without debate, without debate, because I recently had an amend, a harm I was accused of doing. They'll tape out in a second. Listening to that, and the only thing I could say is, I'm sorry. I do not remember the things you're saying, but I am very, very sorry that I have harmed you in that way. And I really meant that, because I, honest to God, friends, did not remember any of the things that she indicated. But what that did is it began the healing part, hopefully, I'm guessing, for her. We owed that to the people we've harmed.
All right. Phone calls over. What I do today is, is there any way that I can make right this wrong? Sometimes they say yes, and there's something, and sometimes, no, we're just glad you're sober, right? We've all had that. All right, so on this particular amend, I'm learning tons and tons of ways that I did it wrong and how I can do it from here on out. What could I have done instead, right? All right, now that's seven years sober.
Fast forward eight years. I'm in North Dakota. This is the state she lives in. I'm a couple, three hours from where she lives. I hear she's dying from colon cancer, might not make it till Thanksgiving, which is about three weeks away. My business with her had been concluded years ago. I just didn't feel it was important or necessary for me to come in with some big, here I am after decades being gone, make my announcement, blah, blah.
The people who love her are the ones that need to be around her, and I'm not in that category. Our business was concluded a long time ago. I learned that she does die a few weeks later. Her half brother contacted me. He was also a member of AA, and he says, Did you know, after conversation, did you know that she was sober? What? Oh my God. What was her sobriety date? Where'd she go to meeting? He says, Well, you know, a lot of that I don't know. She was very private.
We didn't even know she was in AA until she was five years in and starts working. And I'm like, Ten years sober. I flash back eight years ago. Huh. She would have been two years sober when she called me then. Huh. Wonder why she didn't make amends to me. Huh. That's interesting. So that's a series of thoughts, right? And then, thank you God for the last thought. Never was about her making amends to me.
Never was. I was free in that January of whatever that year was. I was free. I did my best in a faulty way to clear up the wreckage I had caused someone else, and freedom was granted. Now, going about when I'm working with the gals, how we set up is, and again, I got this from Clint. When you set up the appointment to make amends, have it
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a single purpose appointment. Don't, and let's go to lunch and drop amends on them. Don't, and let's go shopping or whatever you're going to do. Don't. Just do single purpose. It really, in many cases, is not going to take that long if you get to the point and don't beat around the bush. If you get to the point, it might be a few minutes, it might be an hour conversation, but I always suggest to them too, so that you have an out if this might be something uncomfortable.
We don't know, obviously. Have an out and have a, that you have to leave within an hour for yourself to get to a meeting or meet up with somebody, so that you don't have that out. And so set that up. Be prepared, because I've called to set up an appointment with people to make amends, and it, no matter how we tried to calendar this, it was like, Well, what is it that you want to talk about? And I'll say, Well, as much as I would like to do that in person, I would like to make amends to you.
We can do it right now if you want. Well, okay, so I did, but the point I'm saying is then be prepared with what you got to say. That might be your one opportunity. Again, living amends does not replace direct amends. Direct amends is backed up by living amends. Saying it and not following through, or, well, then it was just hot air. But by living amends, that's all nice and well and good. Well, I bring up old stuff. I mean, everybody is, bye-bye, gones be bygones.
Remember, it's not all about me and me feeling guilt or relieving myself of guilt. It's making amends to give them the opportunity to heal too. They may or may not have something to say, but I need to give them that opportunity. And one more story I want to share with you is— About a year ago, I got a call from a gal I used to sponsor. Just loved this gal. Met her at day seven of her sobriety, never had been to AA before.
She hung around me like a shadow. Whenever I went, at 90 days, asked me to be her sponsor. We did this journey for three, four years. She moved on to a gal I sponsored, came back to me in sponsorship, moved on to another gal I sponsored, then moved out of the area and really just kind of went through her own mental health challenges. Okay. Over the years, we would see each other, always cordial, very heartfelt, still would call her on her AA birthday and really enjoyed her.
When someone moves on in sponsorship from me, I like to ask them, Is there anything that I have done, I'm not aware of, that has harmed you or hurt your feelings to maybe make you decide to move on in sponsorship? Because a couple of times there have been. Most of the time I know there's not, but then again, maybe there was and I'm not aware of it. I'm very open and I want to be generous to any problems you've had with me so I can make those changes.
I'm not going to defend them, but I appreciate, I've developed the maturity to not act like, Well, I didn't do that or say that, or You're wrong, or You shouldn't feel that way. I'm inviting constructive criticism of myself. And most of the time they say no, but a few times they've said, Well, you know, when you said or did… Thank you. Thank you. I wasn't aware that that was harmful. I appreciate you telling me that, and I will learn from that.
So that's me. So I get this call about a year ago from her, and we're having a little chit-chat, nice to hear from you, blah blah. She says, You know, I wanted to share something with you. Do you remember when you were sponsoring me and I moved on, you asked if there's anything that you'd done, and I said no? I go, Yeah, I remember that. She said, Well, there's been something that's bothered me all these years. Okay.
She said, Do you remember when I went to the doctor and I was having these insomnia problems? Yes, and I remember the doctor had suggested this was part of the underlying cause. Yeah, well, he gave me medication, and you told me not to take this medication. And what you did is you gave me a hologram to put in my hand and sleep with for three nights, and I just about went crazy. And that, we were talking on Tradition Ten, having no opinion on outside issues, and that you're saying we don't play doctors, and yet you were playing doctor with
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me. And so that's really why I had to move on in sponsorship. Now, if she could have seen me in person, I'd have had drop jaw. You know, I'm like, first of all, a hologram, you know, isn't a thing. It's an imagery. We've seen them on TV all the time. It's an imagery. I'm not the kind of person who tells you not to take your medication. That's not my place. It's for you and your professional to work with.
A hologram? I so wanted to ask all these questions, like, Do you have the right person? How do you think I would get a hologram to put in your hand? I am baffled, and I'm just drop jaw. Because that is like, you couldn't have found anybody more remote than myself to do something like that. But what I learned from other inventories and so forth was that in her heart, she believed that. That had been in there a long time.
My response was, I am so sorry. I do not remember those actions, but if I did those and caused harm to you, I truly, truly regret that. Now, I know I didn't do it, but she believed that. I said, Is there any way that I can make that right? And there's this pause, and I'm like, Oh my God. And she simply kindly said, You just did. I guess she needed an acknowledgement for something I didn't do, but she believed I did, and that was a wedge that was something within her this whole time.
So I've learned a lot from making and receiving amends, making them and so forth. And again, we could go on, but I'm going to let Kent turn this over to Kent. Thank you. Oh, thanks. I wrote her a challenge. It's, What do you think about putting your own self on your eighth step list? Your turn. I didn't want to chew you out of your time. You know, there's a lot of AA that is open for discussion. And when I was first sober, I thought putting a person on—if I were to put my name on the list, it was because I wanted to take good care of me.
And so, of course, I would want to put my name on the list, and then I could do something good for Kent. And I was just so opposed to it. If somebody had ever mentioned putting their own name on the list, it just created this response in me like, You selfish son of a bitch. Jesus. However, there was occasion where a man that I sponsored had a—he was the recipient of a family farm, and the farm had been passed down four generations to him. And because of his drinking and using, he lost the farm.
And he just threw a lot of bad decisions. It wasn't like he just sold the farm. It's just that he hawked it. You know, he got it into hock, and then they took it over. And so in him is this total embarrassment to his—and he had a big family, and he really just could not even face up to any of his—he couldn't see his family. None of them, you know, he just felt too embarrassed to even address any of his family. And he asked me, can I put my name on the list?
And I thought, what does that look like? You know, what do you need to do? You know, what do you need to do? And he says, I was the one that caused that harm, and
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I don't know how to make it right. And I don't know, it's not a resentment, it's not a fear, it's not making amends to my family because it was in my name. It's just that I feel so rotten that I don't want to get sober and face all those people. So in his case, there was really a reasonable, realistic way of saying, Hmm, maybe in that case it might. But I think most of the time, I mean, there's other instances of that same thing, but I've had a few other things I want to get to. When I think of putting people on the list and the whole concept of harm, and the example that Debbie used is that this gal who had said that she did something, I know Debbie would never in a million years ever imply that they had to change their medication or not. I know that about her.
But still, this person is totally convinced. There was a guy, the reason I ended up accepting I'm an alcoholic is it doesn't matter. I always argued with him about what he said in that meeting, but that meeting was so important to me. What I heard him say made it possible for me to join Alcoholics Anonymous. But what he said is, you know, I didn't say I drank in high school. I didn't even pick up my first drink until I was in college.
And I'm thinking, that's not what you said. So a lot of it has to do with the appearance and what people think and what people do. So… When I'm thinking, when I'm working with somebody on what are the harms done, you know, it really has more to do with other—what kind of challenging personal relations do you have? Where do you have a problem with people? To me, the H-step list, I don't care what you want to say, harm done, others, whatever. Do you have a problem with your parent?
Do you have a problem with your child? Do you have a problem with your old employer or past? You know, are these healthy, normal, functional relations, or do you have a problem in that relationship? If you have a problem in that relationship, I would imagine there's been some harm done. I don't know what it is, or maybe you don't either. So I ask them to look at those kind of challenging relationships that they either have or have had that didn't resolve in a healthy way, and that would be the portion of the list that they're putting together.
Also going back to their fourth and fifth step to get the beef out of there. I wanted to talk about the—Debbie just brings up so much that—so the whole idea of forgiveness when it comes to the making amends. My dad was just a classic character. I don't know how else to say it. I mean, it's an endearing term now, but it wasn't when I was growing up. But, but he was a dick, you know. And he was always critical and judgmental and never supportive and never would say anything positive to me about anything. If he ever had a word to me, it was always something that I should do or could do, and it just became a heavy, heavy burden. I mean, even to the extent that if you were to drive up to his house, he would come out front and tell you how to park, you know.
I mean, but it was so classic that this was, everybody knew that my dad was a dick. And it was kind of funny to everybody, but it was hurtful to me. So when I came across that same idea that I'm going to have to forgive him, how do you forgive somebody for being a dick, you know? And what came to me after some work on that whole thing was that if I could understand why
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he was the way he was, if I could come up with an excuse, if I could give him an excuse for being that way, then I could forgive him. It was easier for me to forgive him if I could just take a couple of facts and put them into place about his life. He grew up in the Depression. He actually had to have, he kept two full-time jobs and supported our family, his parents, and my mother's family during the Depression.
So here's a man who has really never been exposed to how to be a father or how to treat. He really is focused on how do you succeed in business and pay bills. So he really has never had any time or exposure to anything other than do a good job, bring home a paycheck, and work like crazy during the Depression. And so I'm thinking, you know, maybe he just never had the opportunity to figure it out. No one ever talked to him or worked with him or was he exposed to how else to be other than the way he was.
So now I've got in my mind, I don't know whether it's the truth or not, but I've got an excuse that I've given him for his bad behavior. And all of a sudden then I can forgive him for that. And when I was able then to think of him as perhaps spiritually sick, and I mean it was kind of classy. Everybody thought the same thing. I mean, we'd make fun of him, really, as a family. But, you know, then I got to thinking, well, you know, maybe I could just look at him and accept him.
I could just look at him and accept him as he's being a dick, you know? I mean, but it doesn't mean that I, see, I don't— I don't have to have it affect me anymore, because I can see that that's just who he is. So I'm now accepting him exactly as he is. So now the whole thing is like I'm set free from what was my original, you know, painful, hurtful, terrible childhood victim of my father's terrible, you know.
So now I'm to that point that I can go to him and I can tell him, you know, I probably wasn't the best son. Now, I'm thinking I don't think I did anything wrong. God, that's true. But I am in a helpful and forgiving spirit. And so I'm trying to reach out to this man and say, you know, I don't know what harm I've done you, because I, you know, I mean, I remember a couple things. He was 77 years of age, and, you know, I knocked him to the ground, and, you know, I felt bad about that.
It didn't seem like a real fair fight, but… and I had borrowed money from him a lot. I mean, he paid my taxi, bailed me out. He, oh my God, he was a banker, so he had a date and an amount and an entry and a subtotal and a total, and, you know, he knew exactly how much I owed him. And so I said, I knew he had something like that, so I admitted to the fact that I probably owe you some money. And he said, Oh yes. And so I said to him, I am probably not aware of some of the harm that I've done.
And if you would like, I would really like to hear what you experienced so that I could take responsibility for it. There was,
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I went to eight colleges and universities. I spent 14 years in college taking advantage of this man. He wanted me to have—wow, sorry—he wanted me to have a degree because he didn't have an opportunity to go to college. And he was willing to go to anything to make that happen. And every excuse, I flunked out of at least five of those schools. So I am anything but, you know, college material. I had a 2.2. Grade point average, and he got me into dental school by I don't know how. I mean, I had to go and prove myself and so on.
But, you know, if it wasn't for him, you know, my life would still be a shambles, and I owe him so much. But I, you know, just so badly trashed him in my head all those years. So when I went to him to make amends, I still wasn't in that state where I was appreciative of all that he had done. But instead, you know, I'm just still reeling from the fact, like, you son of a bitch, really. And so when I go to him to make amends and I ask him, can you tell me some of those things that I might have done that I'm not aware of? And what I tell the guys, I tell them that I will take responsibility for what you tell me I've done.
And he said, Well, you know, I'm a light sleeper, so every time that you would come over to the house, because I didn't have—oftentimes I did not have a place to stay, and, you know, I'd go sneak in the back door and go to—he'd hear me come in. But every time, he said, you know, like you would sneak out in the middle of the night, and I would stay awake until you came back. And there were times you were gone so long, like I couldn't sleep.
I'd get into my car and I'd drive around and try and find you. And do you remember the times that I took your mother to Europe? I said, Oh yeah, like six or eight times. You went to Europe a lot. He said, Do you know why we went to Europe? I said, You like traveling? He said, No. Your mother was so exasperated by, didn't know how to treat her, what to do with you. I'm the only alcoholic in my family, and I was an off-the-chart kind of taking, you know. He said, She was so fit to be tied that I had to get her away or she was going to go crazy.
And every time we went to Europe, it was because of you. It's like, I didn't know the harm done until I asked. And I just said, you know, that I would take responsibility for that. And the strange thing is this terrible father-son relationship was totally repaired to where he didn't have to be any different than he'd always been. I bought a navigator, and he just thought, Oh my God, why a navigator?
And he would cut out articles out of the newspaper showing me why you shouldn't buy a navigator. And I'd say, Thanks, Dad. I know you care. But he's still being a dick, you know. But it's okay. It's okay. I mean, I just, oh, so thanks. My experience with this step has been amazing. Amazing. I had, I happened to be at a meeting where this fellow, a friend of mine, I never sponsored him, but, you know, I just happened, everybody else is leaving and he gets off the phone and he walks up to me and he says, Oh my God, I just learned that my father molested my daughter.
And… And he didn't quite say it like that. I mean, the man is, like, irate because his father had molested
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him and his sister. And so he is, like, filled with rage and wants to kill his dad. And so we spent some time together, and, you know, what came to me in that time is, you know, I knew what this man had to do. And so I said to Scotty, I said, you know, when you get to that place, you can hear what I have to say, you got to buy me lunch because I know what you need to do. When words come out of your mouth like that and you think, wow, I would have never said that, but you know that God is speaking those words through you.
It's like one of the great joys in sponsorship is, you know, I mean, I'm sure if you've sponsored enough people, you'll have heard something come out of your mouth and you're thinking, wow, that was brilliant. I wish I had thought of that. You know what I'm saying, though? It'll happen when you're—it's like, whoa, that was pretty cool. And so some two or three years later, he called me on the phone and he said, I got to buy you that lunch.
I'm just going to go crazy. And I said, Well, you have a resentment. He said, Well, if that's what you want to call it, I want to kill the son of a— And I said, You're going to have to go make amends to your dad. And he said, in a loud voice, For what? You know? And I said, I would bet that you consider me one of your closest friends. And he said… I said, But the distance between us is so enormous that you cannot connect with any other human being because of that hatred that drives you.
You cannot have a relationship with another woman, because he'd been through every one of them. He's just a single… Because of that hatred drives you. You live with that on an ongoing, everyday basis to such an extent that you prevent anyone from getting close to you. And so if you're going to live at all, you're going to have to go back to that man and tell him that you will no longer allow the wrongdoing of others to run your life, that you're going to take responsibility for your own life and no longer make him responsible for the behavior that he's demonstrating today.
And he did do exactly that. He went back and sat with his dad, and it wasn't a repaired relationship. I don't know that it ever will be. I think, you know, I said it doesn't mean that you don't want the man in prison, and not that he doesn't deserve it. It's just that you need to do this not for your dad. You're doing this to set yourself free. So the resentment is not killing you. You have to do what you need to do to set yourself free.
My sponsor did, when I made my long list of people, he made it pretty clear that I didn't need to go back to all the dealers that I had business with and make amends for. And I thought that was very nice because… And I wasn't really supposed to go back and make right with all those women that I was manipulating into doing things that I wanted that I don't know if they did or not. So he let me off the hook on that.
But he did start a—he started making a list of things I had to make amends for that were kind of generally speaking. And one of them started—he started out by saying, So you were living on the street. And I did. I lived on the street. And he said that, I think you said that about that same time Safeway started opening 24 hours. I said, That's true. He said that the way you existed, because you didn't have any income, was that you went and stole things from Safeway.
Well, that's true. And then he said, So how long were you on the street? And I said, I don't know.
[00:50:00]
I can't remember. He said, Were you on there for a month? I said, Oh, I think so. He said, Were you out there for a year? Oh, no, no, I wasn't there for a year. He said, Well, we'll just call it a year. I said, No, I wasn't out there for a year. And he said, Well, let's just put down a year. And he said, So, like when you went to the Safeway, did you go most of the time or most every day, or didn't you say like every day? I said, Well, most every day.
I'm kind of getting a hint of what he's kind of around here. And so, like how much did you steal every day? And then it was the same thing, two dollars or ten dollars. And he'd say, if I would say, Well, it wasn't a hundred dollars a day, then he'd say, Okay, well, let's just put down a hundred dollars a day. And, oh yeah, and then there was Radio Shack. You mentioned Radio Shack. Let's, you know. So he keeps coming up with this big list, and he's adding that up, you know.
I already got more owed to my dad than I could ever pay in a couple of lifetimes anyway, so it doesn't— so I'm just, okay, okay, okay. So I'm putting it all down. And so, wow, that's, okay, that's a lot of money. And what he said was, you know, I think it came actually right after I had been at a meeting at his house. The sponsees would meet once a month, and we'd go around the room and kind of update on what was going on in our lives.
And the guy to my left, he said that he had a question of what to do. Because he knew he was going to see a dentist at this wedding the next weekend, and he had written off $6,000 in a bankruptcy to the dentist and wanted some feedback as to what to do. And I obviously, because I had had a bankruptcy, I turned to him and said, Hey, legally discharged. Don't worry about it. And just about that time, everybody in the room goes, Ooh, because they knew Glenn didn't have that kind of attitude about bankruptcies.
Glenn was sitting across the room from him, and I said, What are we talking about here? Are you suggesting that he pay back the bankruptcy? And Glenn said, Well, maybe you ought to think about it, because he knew I had one. But I, I mean, his was a little bankruptcy. Mine was, like, huge. And so I spent the night rummaging around trying to find my bankruptcy, and finally found it at, like, 6 a.m. And oh my God. So I called Glenn first thing in the morning at 6 a.m.
because I knew he wasn't up. And I said, So what do I do about my bankruptcy? And he said, Well, why don't you just pick one of them and see what they say? And, oh, okay. Well, I found Chase Manhattan Bank seemed like a reasonable, you know, not very personal bank. You know, call up the bank, and I'm sure they— I called the bank up, and they shifted me around to a few different people, and… Finally, I get this one lady, and I tell her that, you know, I had written off $5,000 in a bankruptcy and wanted to know if there was something they wanted me to do about that. And actually, I didn't say it quite like that.
I said I had a friend who… I was pretty new when this happened, and she said, Well, I need to know your friend's name and social security number. Where do you live? I was embarrassed. But so she said, I'll get back to you. And like two or three weeks went by, and I called up Glenn and I said, Okay, next. They didn't call me back, so I'm free on that one. And he said, Oh, good. You can take the $5,000 and give it to your favorite charity. Well, see, to me it was like it was gone and I didn't have to do anything.
But he didn't look at it that way. He's actually thinking you're going to pay back every penny of that huge, enormous bankruptcy.
[00:55:02]
There's no way. That's not going to happen. That's crazy. That's crazy thinking. Because it was after that that he started adding up all the rest of this and added that to it, right? And so, in the book, under Step Nine is my favorite line. It's on page 78, about two-thirds of the way down. It says, and I can't believe you would say this to an alcoholic, but it says, Arranging the best deal we can.
Pennies on the dollar. I became a negotiator. I was calling up, you know, I can remember an MD I owed $700, and I said, I'll send you 70 bucks. Would you accept it? Yeah. I said, Whoa, heck, next time I'll tell him 10 bucks and see if they'll do it. And I was pennies on the— and I went down that list, and there was still a lot of money that I had to pay back. But then Glenn said to me that— so we're going to go into the next session. I'm not going to finish.
Okay. So Glenn said that you've got a line of work where you can give it back, and I started giving away dentistry to pay for it. And every time we did something, I'd tell the gal to put it on our amends list, the amount, you know. And over the years, you know, I'd always ask her, How are we doing? And she'd always give me the same answer: We're never going to get that done, so don't worry about it. And at times she would say things like, you know, even if we did pay it back, it's still a good thing for us to do.
You know, it's a nice thing that we do for people, and on and on. And finally I was like 14 years sober and two weeks, and I just said to her, Damn it, I put my signature on your check. I want you to go add it up, and I want to find out where we stand. And she took some time and came back, and she says, Why is this sheet? And she just said, We're $2,000 over. Well, it's like I could stand up straight and feel like a man for the first time in my life. I had paid back all the money I had stolen from people.
I have to admit that in that process, there was a woman who was a friend of the family, and she passed away and left everybody in the family money, including me, and it paid off my dad and a few other things. So God did for me what I couldn't do for myself. Just miraculous things happened one after another, and my life became this incredible example. You know, Debbie said that she went through treatment.
I never went through treatment. I tried to get some therapy, but, you know, I had to get the free therapy, and that was all I ever got because I was just too broke to do anything except come to Alcoholics Anonymous. So I have only Alcoholics Anonymous to say thank you for my incredible life. I did have a meeting with my accountant just a couple of days after I had paid off the amends, and the accountant said to me, Hmm, you want the good news or the bad news?
And I said, Well, give me the good news. And he said, Well, you're going to be able to retire someday. I said, Well, what's the bad news? He said, You'll be 72. And as it turns out, when I was 72, I was— I had enough money to retire. And, you know, when I got to the program, I was, just before I got here, I was sleeping under a bush. And that's penniless, homeless, and hopeless. And so it is, I owe my life and everything I have to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. So I would do anything.
You know, I don't care where it is or what it is. You know, it's like you live a life of service because of, you know, what I've gotten, what I've received. I think that's just about all we're going to do for this session. We're going to take a short break. Just about all we're going to do for this session. We're going to take a short break. We'll be back in 15 minutes.