From Kenton Chaos to AA Hope: Michael's Journey

(indistinct)

- Thank you everybody.

Good evening.

My name is Michael and I'm an alcoholic.

It's a special night.

There's a couple of guys on this meeting.

One of the guys I got sober with, Tom N in Las Vegas.

He was here two or three years before I got here

and a guy that I sponsored, Eric showed up on this meeting.

It's good to see both of your guys' faces in there.

I know Nolan and I celebrated,

shared the same home group for 10 years.

It's a good feeling being here this evening.

I'd like to welcome anybody who's relatively new to AA

and I hope you find here what I've found,

which is simply a life that I like better

than the one that I had prior.

And I'd like to welcome anybody who's relapsed

and had to come back to Alcoholics Anonymous.

In my opinion, alcoholism is the worst disease

a human can have.

Well, I grew up in a small town in Ohio.

The name of the town was Kenton, Ohio.

It was a violent town.

It was a small little blue color industry town,

factory workers that was surrounded by like four

or five large metropolitan areas that would truck car parts

and things in and out of the town.

And it was a drug hub and it was a violent place.

As a matter of fact, Jay Leno,

when he was still doing the Tonight Show,

he came out on the Tonight Show one night and said,

"If you want to commit a murder and get away with it,

"move to Kenton, Ohio."

Got more unsolved murders per capita

than any other city in the United States.

That's our claim to fame.

To give you an idea of what it was like for me growing up,

if you could close your eyes

and envision the cast from Deliverance,

that's my mom's side of the family, love those people.

If you could close your eyes

and envision the cast from Road Warrior,

that's my dad's side of the family.

They were all bikers tattooed out, long hair.

My home was, my whole entire life

was surrounded by alcoholics.

My home was a violent home.

My dad's alcoholism was ugly.

My dad would take me to the bars

when I was 10, 11 years old.

I would drive him home from the bars.

I watched his alcoholism progress.

He would beat on me and my brother and my mom.

We snuck out of that house eventually

when I was about 12 years old.

My mom snuck out one picture at a time

to try to escape that suffering alcoholic life.

I learned to keep secrets at a very young age.

I can remember going to school and feeling different.

I knew instinctively not to talk about

the things that took place in my home.

I don't know why I thought that way.

I just knew that that's what you did.

I can remember sitting in my grandmother's couch

and listening to all the men in the family playing cards

and drunk and fighting in the kitchen.

And I looked at my grandmother and I said,

"I'm never gonna drink."

And I can still feel her pat my leg when she'd say,

"Honey, I sure hope you don't."

And I meant it, I never wanted to take a drink.

I can remember when my parents divorced,

my mother and my younger brother and I,

we moved into these tenant welfare project homes

there in Kenton, which kind of labeled you.

If you lived in Heritage Manor,

they knew why you were there.

We paid $4 a month for our rent

and I'd get a pair of shoe vouchers every six months.

They gave me a meal card so that I could eat a free lunch

every day at school.

And for whatever reason,

I would leave that meal card in my pocket.

I couldn't pull it out to let you see

that I was on welfare.

I would rather go hungry rather than humble myself

and show you that I'm on welfare.

That was with me from a very early age.

And I started to get in trouble in that town.

My grandfather became like a surrogate father.

My dad's father, my father had met another woman

and moved away at the time about, I don't know,

he's 30 miles away from the town that we were in.

And my grandfather would pick me up and take me fishing

and take me hunting and just loved me.

He was infamous in this small town.

He was a three-time Golden Glove Prize fighter.

He was a professional baseball player

with the Cleveland Indians.

He was ornery as hell.

Everybody knew him, everybody loved him.

And I'm telling him one of these fishing trips

that were on how my dad has been promising

to come and visit us.

He asked me, "Have you seen your dad?"

And I said, "He keeps promising to come and visit me."

And my brother and I would pack a suitcase

after getting out of school on a Friday

and sit out on the porch stoop waiting for him to show up.

And on Sunday, when the sun was going down,

we'd drag it back in the house and cry

because he didn't care enough to come see us.

I'm telling him the story and he says,

"Be at my house this coming Friday.

I'll make sure your old man's there."

I get out of school, my brother and I run over

to my grandfather's house, which wasn't too far away,

and waiting for dad to show up, the phone rings

and I answer it, it's my dad.

And he says, "Hey, Spider, I'm on my way to come and get you."

And I got excited knowing that dad was gonna come

and visit us.

And an hour and a half later, he calls me and says,

"Hey, bud, I'm gonna stop and have a couple with my buddies

and then I'll be there to pick you up."

And a few hours later, the phone rings and it's my dad.

And he's slurring his words

and he's telling me how much he loves me.

And I can hear the jukebox pounding out

those old country songs.

I slammed the phone down and my grandfather

had worked out a relationship

with a local Black's beer distributor.

And he could buy these bottles of beer deemed seconds.

The labels were warped or upside down or something

was messed up with the bottle.

And he had a refrigerator in the back of the house

that was devoted to just beer.

And I can remember slamming that phone down

and going back to that back patio

and opening that refrigerator door, you know,

and seeing those retarded beer bottles in there.

And I grabbed one, there was a bottle opener on a string

on the door of the refrigerator.

And I popped that bottle of beer and I drank it down

as fast as I could get it in me.

And I grabbed another one and I popped the top off of it.

And about halfway through it,

that magic happened to me for the first time.

It was like I'd lived in total darkness my whole life,

shame and fear.

And someone reached over and turned the light switch on.

You know, it was like, I was able to breathe deeply.

For the first time in my life, I breathed deeply.

And I felt that magic.

I remember looking at my younger brother and saying,

"Stop your damn crying, he ain't worth it."

And I meant it, you know, I felt it.

I gave myself maybe for the first time

the right to be angry, not to be fearful.

And I would pursue that feeling

for the rest of my drinking career.

In spite of the promises that I made to you

that I was not gonna drink again,

I'm the guy who always drinks again.

I'm like 16 years old at this time.

And I'm sneaking out of my house for the first time.

I go downtown like, you know, like a moth to a flame, right?

I go downtown where everybody's cruising their hot rod cars

around the courthouse square with their girlfriends.

And I'm hanging out on the courthouse square

watching them go by.

And this guy walks up to me, his name was Willie Herring.

I'd never met him before in my life.

He was like 19 at the time.

And he looked at me and he says, "Hey, you wanna get high?"

And I said, "Yeah."

I had no idea what that meant.

He took me to this little infamous place in town,

just off, just down the street a little bit

where you had to shimmy between this little wooden shack

where someone stored their lawn equipment

and this cinder block building where they repaired cars

during the day.

And the cinder block side was all painted

like Pink Floyd the wall, you know?

So I knew I was someplace cool.

The wooden barn side, everybody carved their initials in.

And my friend Willie fires up a joint

and we smoked this joint.

And about halfway through,

I start carving my initials in the wall.

We were there for a while.

It's winter time in Ohio and we leave the crack

and we're heading back toward downtown.

And as we're walking along,

the left sleeve on my coat went up in flames.

And I mean, there was like flames jumping off my coat

and my new best friend Willie tore my coat off me

to save my life.

And I'm like bewildered.

I have no idea what caught me on fire.

I walk all the way back to the crack

looking for someone who might be burning trash

that might've ignited the flame.

I couldn't find anything.

The next morning in sobriety, you know, when I was sober,

I realized that I had my hands up in my coat

and I was smoking a cigarette and I'd flicked the cigarette

and the cherry had fallen on the cuff.

And it just caught enough air to go up in flames.

But at the time I deduced that God had set me on fire

for getting high.

You know, I'd done something terribly wrong.

I grew up in religious homes.

My father's side were Southern Baptist

and my mother's side were Pentecostal.

And if I knew one thing for sure,

it was I was gonna go to hell.

But I come up with this idea that God just set me on fire

for getting high.

And I'm walking through downtown Kenton heading home

in the winter time without a coat.

And I hear this voice, "Hey Denny."

I look over and there's a group of guys

huddled around a box in the parking lot

of this abandoned bank.

The guy who yelled my name was a guy named Carlin Fallis.

We called him Cocky.

He was a six foot four black guy

who was born the same day, same year,

same month as my father.

And my grandparents moved him in when he was a kid

and raised him.

So he knew me really well.

And as I'm walking by, "Denny."

I look over, he says, "Get over here, boy."

I ran over to where they were at and he looks at me

and he says, "Where's your coat, boy?"

And I said, I tried to tell him

how God just set me on fire for getting high

back at the crash.

And he looked at me like I was nuts

and he handed me this bottle of wine.

He says, "Here, take a pull on this, it'll warm you up."

And I pulled on this bottle and man,

I can still to this moment feel that it went down

and hit my feet and started to come back up, you know?

And I pulled on that bottle again.

It was wild Irish rose wine that had fallen off a truck.

And if you've never had wild Irish rose wine,

you missed it, man.

This is like wine that doesn't require grapes.

You know, it's got a twist off cap, you know,

get you where you want to go right now.

And I remember being dismissed and man, I felt good.

That magic happened for me to get, you know,

that glow appeared in my life one more time.

And I'm walking across town to get back to Heritage Manor.

I get in sometime in the morning,

two o'clock in the morning.

I make myself a bologna sandwich and I go upstairs to bed.

And about three or four in the morning,

I wake up with my heart trying to jump out of my chest.

You know, I can't breathe.

I set up, my sheets are red.

I get my feet on the floor and I'm disoriented.

And I'm looking across the room at the mirror

on the back of my dresser

and I could tell my face was messed up.

I knew something had happened to me.

So I walked over to the mirror

to get a better look at myself.

And when I got there,

that bologna sandwich was stuck to my face.

Now let's review.

16, I sneak out of the house.

I smoke a joint with a guy that I'd never met before.

I catch myself on fire.

I get drunk on wine and I wake up with a bologna sandwich

stuck to my face.

You would think, but after an experience like that,

that you wouldn't repeat it.

You know, I'm done with this stuff,

but I could not wait to do it again.

It was my life after that.

You know, I would go on to do things that I'm not proud of.

You know, I would steal things from my grandparents.

I snuck into her house one time,

took like 45 of her quaaludes.

I steal things from them.

I took a ring from them

that my grandfather gave my grandmother

and just, you know, horrible things.

You know, I started to get a reputation in that small town

and I called my dad and I asked him

if he would allow me to come and live with him.

And he said, come on.

At the time he had moved to Phoenix, Arizona

and my younger brother and I jumped on a Trailways bus

in Columbus, Ohio,

and we rode it for three and a half days to Phoenix, Arizona.

What a trip that was, man.

That was a growing experience.

If you've never ridden a Trailways bus across country,

I'd advise you not to.

It's not a very pleasant experience.

I get to Phoenix and I have this firm resolution

that I'm gonna change my life.

And I've got hair down to the middle of my back

and I wear nothing but concert t-shirts.

You know, I just, I look smoked out, you know,

and I cut my hair short like it is now

and I get these button-down shirts

and I start my senior year of high school

in Phoenix, Arizona with a resolution to change my life.

I mean, nobody knows me.

I'll just reinvent myself.

I'm 3000 miles away from anybody who knows me.

I'm at that school maybe two weeks

and I'm in the parking lot with the same people

I left in Ohio.

We're doing the same things, getting the same results.

I get pulled over for drinking and driving twice in a row,

like back to back.

My stepmom was a police officer for the Phoenix police.

So they would drive me home in the eighties

and knock on the door and my dad and stepmom

would answer the door and I'd get the lecture

about what I was doing.

They'd bring me in and tell me

how my potential is being wasted

and why can't you pull it together?

You know, and I had deceiving resentment against my father.

You know, it was horrible

what I was experiencing that time.

And I knew I needed to get out of there.

I went down and took the ASVAB test,

which is an aptitude test to get into the military.

I scored high mechanically.

So the air force took me.

And before you know it, I was gone in basic training.

I got out of basic training and was sent to Texas

where I was to learn all the system components

of jet aircraft.

And man, the air force did nothing

but teach me how to drink.

We drank every day.

As a matter of fact, when I was in the military,

they had vending machines that you could buy a beer

out of the dormitory

and it would refuse to give us a beer one night.

So we threw it out of the second story window

and ruined beer vending machines in the dormitories

for the rest of everybody who would enter the military.

Sorry about that.

I graduated the school that I was in,

the technical school that I was in,

and they were handing out orders.

And one guy had gotten orders to go to upstate New York

and I had gotten orders to go,

or he had gotten orders to go to Germany

and I had gotten orders to go to upstate New York.

The guy started crying

because he didn't want to go overseas.

And I said, I'll go to Germany.

So he handed me his orders and I handed him my orders.

And it said that I had 30 days leave

before I had to fly out to go to Germany.

So I went back to Phoenix, Arizona

and I made it about three blocks away from my family's home.

And I met some people that I knew

and started partying and drinking

and I stayed drunk for 30 days.

I barely made it to the airport to fly overseas to Germany.

What a long, miserable flight that was.

When I got off and I got to the barracks,

there was a note for me to go see the commanding officer.

And I went down there the next morning, knocked on his door.

He invited me in and he looked at me, he says,

"Where have you been?"

And I said, "I was in Phoenix."

And he says, "Didn't you go home?"

And I said, "I didn't make it."

And he gave me a look,

a look that would come back to me

over and over from that point.

But he looked at me, he says,

"What do you mean you didn't make it?"

I said, "I didn't make it."

He says, "Look, I hate to be the bearer of bad news here,

but your grandfather called here

looking for you a couple of times.

He was in the hospital.

I'm sorry to tell you that your grandfather's passed away."

Now, this was the guy, man, the one guy who loved me,

who came and picked me up, who had my back.

If my life was falling apart

and I needed to call one person, it would have been him.

And I had a moment where I saw,

it had been so long since I'd picked up the phone

to even tell him what was going on in my life,

or to let him know that I was thinking of him.

I was so self-obsessed.

I couldn't hear anything this guy was telling me

from that point on.

I got out of his office and I went to the nearest bar

because if you're anything like me,

those emotions are very hard for me to process.

And the only thing that made it go away from me

was a good stiff drink.

I could take that drink and breathe, you know,

and tell myself it's gonna be okay.

Alcohol worked for me every time like that.

And the problem is I got two problems with alcohol.

I got this one problem that when I take a drink of alcohol,

something happens to me that's bodily

and mentally different from a normal person.

I take a drink of alcohol and my body and my mind

demand that I have another drink of alcohol.

And I'm the guy sitting at the bar with my friends

saying they want to get out of there

and I want to get up and leave with them,

but I know I need another drink.

And I'm telling them just one more

and we'll get out of here.

Just one more and we'll leave.

And I one more and I one more and I one more

until I wake up someplace I have no idea who I'm with

or how I got there.

And I got to run down to the nearest intersection,

find out where I'm at and call someone to come get me

and drive around and look for my car.

And that's repeated over and over and over in my life.

The second problem I have with alcohol

is when you take it away from me.

When you take alcohol away from me,

it's just a matter of days before I become so irritable,

restless and discontent.

I'm coming out of my skin.

Just the sound of you breathing makes me want to choke you.

I can't deal with it.

And the only thing that makes that go away

is a good stiff drink.

It works every time, but I'm bodily and mentally different.

And I take that drink and it takes a drink

and I wake up someplace I have no idea how I got there.

That's the story of my alcoholism in a nutshell.

That's the story of my life drinking.

It's a complete torturous hell.

And by the time I'm done in Germany, I'm drinking alone.

I'm pissing my bed a couple nights a week.

I'd get up out of that bed and flip the mattress

and I'd go into the bathroom and pull the wet underwear off

and stuck them back in this covey hole

where nobody could find them.

And on the way out, I'd open up the freezer

on the refrigerator and I'd pull a bottle of tequila add up

and chug on it and throw it up and chug on it

just to get it to go down enough

to where I could go to sleep for a few minutes.

And then I'd get that knock at the door.

It was my boss coming to pick me up to take me to work

because they knew that I wasn't gonna show up

unless they came and got me.

People liked me.

I was likable enough.

I did a good job when I was there.

I just couldn't stop drinking.

My life was completely out of control with alcohol.

I had another moment of clarity around the holidays

when I was in a class six store.

And when you're overseas, they give you a ration card

so that you can buy things like tobacco and alcohol

and sugar, things that you could sell in the black market.

You can buy them pretty cheap.

And I'm standing in line holding this bottle of booze

and this lady pulls up with her grocery cart behind me

and it's full of booze.

And I get a look at her and her hair was shiny.

Her eyes were clear and bright.

She smelled like a flower.

Her clothes were beautifully pressed.

And I had a moment looking at myself.

I'm standing in a uniform that I'd been in for three days.

My boots hadn't been shined.

My fingers are grubby.

I'm clutching that bottle.

And the guy says, "Next."

And I hand him this ration card

that had been in and out of my wallet so many times.

It looked like a fragile old document.

You know, it was just barely hanging together.

And he looks at it and studies it.

And he says, "There's no place to mark on this card.

I can't sell you that."

And I said, "Just please put a mark in next month."

And he gave me that look.

You know, that disgusted look.

And I bought it and I ran outside and pulled the bottle

and chugged on it until I could make myself feel okay.

Like I was going to be all right

and slunk my head and go back to my room.

That's a horrible way to live.

You know, I had my neighboring roommate.

It was his birthday and he wanted to go out.

And so we went out to this place in Mordlautern, Germany

and we drank till the place closed.

And on the way back to the barracks,

it had rained earlier that day.

And as I'm driving like around this curve leaving town,

like the tires broke on the asphalt

and started to slide across the center lane of the road.

And there was this iron gate that was cocked open

that kind of gave access to the back of someone's house

where they would store their car.

And I hit that gate straight on

and it slung me back out into the road

and my passenger door comes caving in,

the top comes crushing down.

We spin around, a car comes to a stop

and I'm looking at my roommate.

He's bleeding and holding his ribs

and I'm asking him, "Are you okay?"

And he says, "Yes, see about the guy on the bicycle."

And I said, "Are you all right?"

And he says, "Yes, see about the guy on the bicycle."

And I looked out the driver's door window

and in the middle of the roads,

this crumpled bicycle in this man's body.

And I ran over to him trying to give him CPR.

It was clear that he had died.

His neck had broke the minute he hit the top of my car.

His name was Carl Bega.

He was 53 years old.

He was driving drunk on his bicycle

down the middle of the road, wearing a black suit.

He was known as the town drunk.

I was, they took blood out of my arm that night.

The next morning, I get a knock at the door.

It's the commanding officer and the first sergeant.

And they said, "You were drinking last night."

I said, "Yes, sir."

He says, "Are you where there's an accident?"

I said, "Yes, sir."

He says, "A man died."

I said, "I am aware."

He said, "How much did you have to drink?"

And I said, "I had a couple."

That was my standard answer, man.

That's been passed down generation after generation

in my family.

I had a couple, I had a few.

They said, "Well, your blood alcohol is 0.35."

I said, "That's impossible."

They said, "That's what we think.

You're talking to us like you're normal, don't worry.

We're gonna run this test again.

We'll get it right.

We'll take care of it."

I said, "Okay."

A few hours later, they come back with this time

with an armed SP.

They put me in handcuffs.

They take me to the barracks, the jail on base.

They throw me in this cell.

And I don't remember much of the next three days

other than coming out of my skin

and the things that I've said and did.

Three days later, I come to in the middle of me

and there's no more song I can play for you

to get out of what's happened.

I've got nothing to offer.

I get court-martialed.

I'm given a felony conviction for manslaughter,

a dishonorable discharge,

and sentenced to prison in Mannheim Prison

where they strip search me three times a day

for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

And four, if I wanna go to the yard or to the library.

And I remember laying in that jail cell crying at night

because I don't belong in this place.

I'm not like these people.

I had an accident.

Do you people know what an accident is?

This was my attitude.

And the longer that I was in that prison,

the more I came to realize that almost everybody in there

was just like me.

There were people who drank too much or used drugs,

did something stupid that wound up putting them in prison.

There were some bad people in there as well.

But I started writing letters to a four-star general

that I very peripherally knew.

And he sent me to,

after being there a little over a year,

he sent me to Denver, Colorado

to the 3320th Correction Rehabilitation Squadron

where there were seven beds

that were all doctors, attorneys, and me.

And I had individual counseling with a therapist every day

and group therapy with six other men every day.

And I told him how my dad came home every day at five o'clock

and we had dinner together.

And on the weekend, we'd go to picnics.

I blew a smoke screen up their ass.

I just needed people to see other than who I was.

Because if you knew who I was,

you would not want anything to do with me.

You'd take me right back to Germany,

throw me in the cell and lock the door.

And they made me go to AA.

Can you believe that shit?

They made me go to AA once a week.

And I'm going into these meetings

and listening to you people talk about alcoholism

and pass the basket and talk about God.

I've been baptized in five different churches, man.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

I knew this was not gonna work for me.

I get kicked out of that hospital.

I lost my primary purpose.

And this girl that I'd met for five minutes

was from Las Vegas.

And I jumped in her car and went to Las Vegas with her.

I married her.

I knew her three weeks and married her.

That's where I met Tom.

And man, I must've been a vision for you.

I'm walking into Alcoholics Anonymous meetings late

so I don't have to introduce myself to you.

And I'm leaving early so I don't have to hold your hand.

And I'm contemplating chewing on the end of a pistol.

Can't live.

And we know what it's like when you can't take a drink, man.

I'm so irritable, restless, and discontent.

And I did the single greatest thing I ever did in my life

when I walked up to this cowboy named Eddie Kelsey

and I asked him to be my sponsor.

And Eddie started the relationship

that was probably one of the greatest relationships

I've ever had in my life.

He understood alcoholism and more importantly,

he understood the recovery process from alcoholism.

And he was willing to take the time to pass it on to me.

He would call me and I would just come unglued on him.

Just, you know,

I'm living in the Enchanted Garden Apartments, Eddie.

It's the lowest rent district there is in Las Vegas.

You know, the billboard outside said,

welcome to the Enchanted Garden Apartments

where your neighbors are friends for life.

And I was so sick of it, man.

I had one piece of furniture

that I pulled out of a Dipsy dumpster.

It was this foam thing that folded up like a couch.

And when it was a couch, you just kind of slide off of it,

you know, 'cause it's probably why it was in the trash.

And when you unfolded it, my legs hung off about three feet

because it was too short as a bed.

That's all I've got in there.

And I'm complaining and complaining to this cowboy.

He says things like,

I'm gonna be at your house at six o'clock in the morning,

be awake.

And he'd hang up.

Six o'clock in the morning,

I opened the door and there he is, shiny eyes.

He stood there, he says, are you gonna invite me in?

And I'm like, sure, come in.

There ain't nothing to see here.

He walks in and looks around that apartment.

And then he reached out

and he grabbed me by the back of the head

and he pulled me in and he said, Michael, I love you.

He said, come here, son.

And we went over and we got on our knees

at that piece of foam and he started to pray,

God, please help us set aside

everything we think we know about you.

God, please help us set aside

everything we think we know about AA,

everything we know about each other

so that we can have a new experience.

He starts to spoonfeed AA to me.

He starts to take me to all the meetings that he goes to.

He asked me to get a commitment

at every meeting that I attended.

And I start to do this AA waltz, right?

We all do it.

If we're lucky, we all stick and do it.

And what happened for me was I woke up

in the middle of sobriety.

I was about a year sober and I'm driving down Joe W. Brown,

which at the time paralleled the International Hilton.

And I started to cry so hard

that I had to pull my car over.

I was on my way to a 7 a.m. meeting, which my home group,

and the thought hit me that I was going there

anxious to see a newcomer who was there the day before

and hoping and praying that he was sober another day.

And it hit me so hard

that that thought didn't originate from me.

It never has originated from me.

There was something working in me,

a power greater than myself

that enabled me not to pick up a drink for almost a year.

My life changed.

You changed my life.

Eddie Kelsey changed my life.

Who would have thought that developing some type of faith

and a power greater than yourself

could allow you to go to work every day?

Or developing a faith and a power greater than yourself

could enable you to have relationships with people

that lasted more than a day or a week.

Having faith and a power greater than yourself

could help you to pay your bills on time.

Having faith and a power greater than yourself

could actually help you keep from picking up those things

that destroy your life one day at a time.

That's what AA has given me.

It's given me a purpose.

It's given me a wealth of friends.

It's given me my family.

And it's been piecemeal for me.

It's like I was so desperate for God

to take away my alcoholism.

Man, was I desperate.

When I made that prayer, it was sincere and he did it.

He took it.

It's the other areas of my life that I've struggled with.

I'm 35 years sober and I'm still scratching the surface

on certain areas of my life.

And what I've come to discover is I do these 10 yard dashes

in a nine yard room.

You know what I mean?

I do them over and over and over and over

in every area of my life.

And when I'm bloody enough and beat up enough,

I say that prayer with sincerity.

God, I'm ready for you to have this.

Please help me with my relationships.

Please take my daughter.

Please help me with my job.

But every one of those surrenders comes at a price,

because I've got this self-will that's so stuck on me.

I think that I can manage well.

And I can't.

And it's only in those moments that I become willing,

like the drowning needs a breath of air,

that I'm able to turn it over

to a power greater than myself.

And I can do that one day at a time.

And that knowledge comes slow for me.

But when it does, it's profound.

That day that I was driving down Joe W. Brown

and I started to cry,

I've had many of those experiences in sobriety.

A spiritual way life has to be lived.

It can't be something that I did yesterday

and I think it's gonna carry me through today.

I can remember one of the guys on the meeting here

called me one day crying and I was taken aback.

I said, "Are you all right?"

And he said, "Yeah."

I said, "What's going on?"

He said, "I'm standing in line at a grocery store

buying flowers."

And he starts to laugh at himself.

And I said, "What's going on?"

He's like, "Someone's cooking dinner for me.

And I had the wherewithal to stop them buy flowers."

And he starts crying.

And he says, "I just wanna thank you for being in my life

and helping me think like this

and live a spiritual way of life."

And I said, "Listen to me, pal.

This is really important."

I said, "The next time somebody walks

into the Alcoholics Anonymous Noom

and he can't show the world anything

but his fear and his anger and his resentment

and his self-loathing, walk up to him

and tell him that one of the greatest moments of your life

is gonna be standing in line at a grocery store

buying flowers.

He'll look at you like you got three heads.

You're living a spiritual way of life,

which is all we're guaranteed.

If we do what Alcoholics Anonymous tells us,

we will live presently in a spiritual way of life.

And if I can remain right here, right there,

not in morbid reflection of yesterday or fear of tomorrow,

to stay right here and invite God right into this moment,

I live in a wonderful world.

I have great relationships

and I have the ability to act on a faith

that's hard for me to do.

I'll say this and shut up.

There's a guy who was standing at the edge

of the Grand Canyon overlooking the majesty of it all.

He was a man of faith.

And as he's standing there, the rock breaks.

It's thousands of feet to the bottom of the canyon.

He's gonna die.

And this lone branch sticking out

of the side of the mountain,

this guy hits it and he's hanging there

for dear life, being a man of faith.

He says, "God, please help me."

And a voice from this guy said, "Do you believe?"

And the guy said, "Yes, God, I believe."

The voice said, "Do you believe?"

And the guy said, "Yes, God, I believe."

The voice said, "Let go of the branch."

The guy hangs there a few minutes and says,

"Is there anybody else up there?"

That's my faith.

You know, I need you.

I need you desperately today, 35 years into this program.

I need you more today than I ever have

because you're God with skin on it.

And I love you.

I appreciate you all for being here tonight.

I thank you for thanking me to be here

to share my experience, strength and hope.

And I hope that somebody here heard something tonight

that makes them want to come back to another AA meeting.

Thank you.

- Following the Beatles.

(laughing)

- Thank you, guys.

What a great group you have.

Thank you.

You know, I still attend the Sunday meeting of the group.

- Such is.

Nolan has all the information for it.

It is.