Below is a raw transcript from the audio recording by
Denis D. in 2024.(Click to go back)
Thank you, my name is Dennis. I'm an alcoholic and also a grateful member of Al-Anon. And thank you, Shelley. That was a powerful message. And you and I have so much in common.
I'm allowed to talk at the dinner tonight. I had a little bit of an emotional crisis when I got up on the dais and that I'm a member of Al-Anon, but I'm also a member of AA. So I put my books over there thinking I'd like to sit at the end. And then I saw, oh, no, no, the AA people sit here. The Al-Anon people sit over there.
Because I'm a people pleaser, I was completely perplexed. Where am I supposed to sit? Because I want to keep everybody happy. When I was new in Al-Anon, I'm going to let me back up. So my sobriety date is September 15, 1984.
And on that day, I was sitting all alone in a jail cell at the ripe old age of 22, having failed in every department of life that a 22-year-old man can fail at. And I had what I like to call my first realization, which was it wasn't bad luck. But I had the wrong friends. It was my relationship with alcohol and drugs. That was the common thread and all my problems, of which I had many.
And I was charged with felony armed robbery. And the week before that, I got a letter from the dean of the University of California at San Diego informing me that they didn't need me to come back to school in the fall. But they would like me to pay back the $10,000 in student loans that I had taken to buy cocaine with. That felony I was charged with, I was fleeing the scene of the felony in a car I owned. But I didn't have registration.
It was uninsured. And I was driving without a ballot driver's license. So I wasn't winning at that point in my life. So I sat in that jail cell thinking, what am I going to do? In this little voice in my head said, the common thread and all your problems in this is your relationship with alcohol and drugs.
And I didn't have, boom, the bright solution to my life. In fact, I sat with that reality for a good, I don't know, hour. And then it occurred to me I had no other, I was out of good options, right? Step zero. Step zero.
I had no other good options. I had burned them to the ground. And I thought that I might say a prayer to a god. I was sure it didn't exist. But if he did, he probably didn't want to have anything to do with me, but I had no other options.
So I fell to my knees and I said, god, please help me. I don't want my life to be about this. And that prayer has been answered. In fact, it's been answered every day for the past 39 plus years. And that started my trajectory into recovery.
It has been necessary for me to drink or use since then. What I can tell you is that I have not been the model AA student. In fact, I've done just enough to stay sober. And there's a couple truths that I've learned along my journey, the first of which is the loving, higher power that you guys introduced me to cares about me. And when I say cares about me, that comes right out of the third step.
So a caring god has creative solutions for all my problems. He accepts me exactly where I am. I don't have to have a special creed or a mantra or a certain prayer for that higher power to have concern about my life. That higher power wants to be in relationship with me. And the way my higher power relates to me is through our literature and through all of you.
There's a line in one of the uponshads. It's a prayer. And it says, Lord of love revealed in all the scriptures, you're the pure one masquerading as the many. And that lives true in my heart when I read our program literature. My higher power speaks to me.
And when I go to a meeting and I listen to you, my higher power speaks to me. And occasionally, I will hear the still small voice. And that's usually when I'm not getting the message from those first two channels. The E stands for empathy. My higher power feels for me and with me.
So I don't have a judgmental god anymore. My gods right there with me. So I got out of jail. I was OR to my father's custody. And through a series of events, I wound up in a treatment center.
And they introduced me to Alcoholics Anonymous. And like I said, I didn't take to it like a duck to water. I fought every word in the big book. Who puts a word like juggernaut in the big book? All right?
But see, the program works in spite of me. And so I was fortunate enough that I've had good sponsorship. And my first sponsor, Ed B, he passed away sober when I had about 50 days sober. He had me read the first 164 pages. I had made notes about all the stuff that was in there that needed to be changed.
They could have written it better. It's poorly written. What is this hokey? In any reason, Dennis read the first 164 pages, meet me at my home group, which was at Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz in the education building. And he said, after that, we're going to go do the third step.
Now at that point, I fancied myself an agnostic still. I had moved from atheist into the agnostic camp because I set a prayer in a jail cell. And I got out of the jail cell temporarily. And now I was sober 45 days. I'm like, maybe there's a higher power, not sure.
So I needed his meeting. And the thing you need to know about Ed, well, first of all, it says in the big book in the chapter, working with others that we are people who normally wouldn't associate. So let me paint a picture for you. I'm 22 years old. I was a punk rocker, so I had a Mohawk, ripped jeans, Doc Martin boots, suicidal tendencies, t-shirt, earrings.
Ed, on the other hand, looks like Tom Bosley, Richie Cunningham's dad. He's about 70 years old, golf shirt, argyle sweater, khaki pants, loafers. So we definitely make a parent. So unbeknownst to me, there's a chapel in the front of Dominican Hospital. So we get Ned's Volvo, we drive around.
He's got your big book. Yeah, I got my book, Ed. We go into this chapel. It's just Ed and I, we sit on a pew. He puts the kneel down.
He says, kneel next to me. Open your book to the third step prayer. Hold my hand. Well, right away, I'm like, so what the heck's going on here? Like nobody told me this was gonna happen, right?
And so I'm kneeling next to Ed. I'm holding his hand. And he says, let's read this prayer together. And so we said the third step prayer together. And then I sat down and Ed was very intuitive.
He could see the look of terror on my face. And he said, how do you feel? And I said, well, it's a program of rigorous honesty. In fact, if you were listening in how it works, there's one word that's mentioned three times before they even get to the steps. And that word is honesty.
And that's really the principle behind getting sober and making progress in Al and on, as being honest with myself. And I said, well, honestly, Ed, I feel pretty awkward. And I said, number one, you know I'm struggling with this whole God thing. And in fact, I come from an Irish Catholic family. So one of the truths is, is wherever there's four Irishmen, there's always a fifth, that's my family.
So I said, I'm really struggling with this whole God thing. And in fact, if you want me to believe in the God that requires me to be on my knees, to communicate with that entity, I just can't do it. And he said, oh no, I agree with you. I didn't ask you to kneel because God requires it. I asked you to kneel because every time you drink and use, your disease will bring you to your knees.
And in fact, that's where you were 45 days ago. Don't forget it. That made sense to me. I said, well, I'm not a homophobe Ed, but why are we holding hands? And he says, it's a we program.
He said, in fact, all the words in the 12 steps are in the plural, they're we, they're not you. And he said, in fact, the best you could do was wind up charged with failure, marabri crashing your car without registration, yada, yada, yada. I said, but recovery, you're never alone again. You'll always have your higher power and he will speak to you through other people. And that made sense to me.
And then he said, I have good news and bad news for you. Which would you like first? And being trying to be an optimist, I said, I'll think the good news first. I'll think the good news. And he said, well, the good news is that you're 22 years old, you're an alcoholic and a drug addict, and you're clean and sober.
And you have a desire to be clean and sober. That's a gift from a loving higher power. And that made me feel really good. It still does. And I said, well, what's the bad news?
And he said, well, the bad news is that you're 22 years old and you're a drug addict and an alcoholic. And you're an ego maniac. In fact, it says that in the 12 by 12. If you've ever read that part in the 12 by 12 under the 12 step, Bill writes that several of the early members talked to a group of doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists to find what common characteristics does the alcoholic share? Right?
Because we're such a diverse group. Just looking out at all of you, we're a diverse group. And I'm paraphrasing Bill says, we were shocked when we heard their answers. They said that the common threat amongst all of us is that we're childish, emotionally sensitive and grandiose. That's me.
If you want to know how to bumper stickers, I may not be much on all I think about. Um, but at any rate, getting back to my story, Ed said, because you are an addict and an alcoholic and you're young, you might wake up one morning and the desire to start drinking and using will be stronger than the desire to be sober that you have today. And he said, in the sad part, the pitiful and comprehensible demoralization, the cunning, baffling, powerful part about this disease is you probably won't even know it. And then you'll be low it. And you might not make it back.
And that terrified me. I had chills go up my spine when he said those words. And I said, well, okay. And he said, but I'm gonna make you a promise. And he looked me in the eyes.
And that's something that we do here in A&A. And now we look each other in the eyes because we tell the truth. And he said, I promise you, if you do one small thing every day to treasure your gift because it's a gift of recovery, you will get to keep it. And he said, and the small things could be going to a meeting, being of service, saying a prayer, stacking chairs. We used to wash ashtrays, but we don't do that anymore.
I'm lapping the floor, saying, how do I newcomer? Writing an inventory. Any of those things do one small thing every day and you'll stay sober. And that's been true for me. So I wanna talk about my home group.
So I should say that I actually have four home groups. I'm in A&A and I'm in Alamance. My home groups in A&A are the Unshakable Foundation for Life Group. It's a men's meeting. We're all connected through sponsorship.
I also go to the Conscious Contact Meditation Meeting which is we meditate together. We read literature in regards to the 11th step. And then my home groups in Alamance are the Tuesday morning, spiritual awakening group, where we read literature and we meditate. And then the plant the seed group. So it takes a village to keep me on the path.
But one of the things that we read at one of my meetings, which right out is Big Book, I know we've read a lot today. And I'm sorry, Shelley, we're gonna read some more. So this is out of, there is a solution, chapter two, page 25. And it says, there is a solution. Almost none of us like the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings, which the process requires for its successful consummation.
But we saw that it really worked in others and we'd come to believe in the hopelessness and the futility of life as we've been living it. That's clearly to me. When therefore we were approached by those in whom the problem had been solved, there was nothing left for us, but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools that had been laid at our feet, we have found much of heaven and have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed. And when I first read that, I thought, well, what are they talking about? I did a lot of acid when I was out there.
This is like the bill good with dead show or what's going on here, fourth dimension. And then later on, I just thought it was referencing peak spiritual experiences. And clearly that's probably true. But what I believe today in my journey in recovery, and it really didn't fit into place for me, this fourth dimension of existence until I started working the Al-Anon program of recovery. So I started going to Al-Anon in December 5th, 1997, is my Al-Anon anniversary.
And I was miserable in my life. I was 13 years clean and sober. I had been given a life back. The things that we read about the promises that the big book had come true for me. I had become a father.
I had a very successful career. I had two small children. I had the respect of family, friends. I had worked all the steps. And I got all these things in my life.
And my life got really busy. In fact, so busy that I stopped going to meetings three times a week. And that very quickly became once a week. And then it was once a month. And then it was come late, leave early.
And I was slowly dissociating myself from alcoholics and non-emes. And I coined a word for that. So we get a spiritual awakening as a result of working these steps. We have the disease of alcoholism, the family disease of alcoholism. And then there's a comorbidity, which I call spiritual narcolepsy.
And I become a spiritual narcoleptic. Spiritual awakening was gone. My life was miserable most days, but I wasn't drinking. And it had gotten, I'm such a bullshit artist. And it says right in how it works, some of us have tried to hold on to old ideas and the result was nil until we let go, absolutely.
And almost 40 years that I've been in AA, every day is a battle to let go of another old idea. And so I had, at that point, there was a television show on TV. And then while I was isolating, in a marriage I was miserable. And I loved my children, that part was great. There was a show called a John Lura Kett Show.
And the character on that show managed a bus station and he was in AA. So if I watch that show, I counted it as going to a meeting. I'm. . .
Some of us are sicker than most. So my higher power has creative solutions for my problem. My higher power accepts me where I'm at. At that point I was checked out of AA. My higher power wants to be in a relationship with me.
And my higher power empathizes with where I'm at. So what my higher power did is send three gentlemen from my home group. They came to my office where I was really busy with my job, why are these AA buddies showing up in my office? And they said, we wanna take you out to lunch because we noticed you haven't been coming to many meetings. And I'm like, well, you don't understand, I'm really busy, I got this promotion.
And yadda yadda yadda. And one of the guys got right up in my face and he said, how is that being your own higher power? Are you happy? Are you having a good time? And I had no clever retort because it was a truth.
And it really brought me up short. And so I realized that I had been playing with the most precious gift I'd ever been given the desire to be sober and a clean and sober life. So I recommitted to AA and I started coming back to Al-Anon, I was referred to Al-Anon by a therapist. And that was the other piece of the puzzle. And this is where the fourth dimension of existence took on a new meaning for me.
Because what it really talks about, and it's alluded to in our AA literature, but it's more, in my opinion, straightforward in the Al-Anon literature, that the disease affects me. Physically, I have a physical allergy to alcohol, mental obsession in the mind, spiritual soul sickness. But I'm also emotionally incapable of dealing with life. In my coping skills, part of the reason that I drank is reality was just too painful. Just too painful.
And I grew up in this multi-generational alcoholic addicted family. And what I saw were two models. The alcoholics in my family, reality is too painful. Just take something and forget about it, black it out. The ones that were the codependents, bend reality, try to change people, places and things.
And guess what, they don't work, didn't work for me. I had to bottom out on both. What I found in recovery, however, is that the fourth dimension of existence and Bill talks about it in the forward to the 12 by 12, he says, and I'm quoting, the 12 steps are a set of spiritual, a set of principles, spiritual in their nature, which when practiced as a way of life, not a philosophy, not a dogma, practiced as a way of life, can relieve the great obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to live a happily, usefully whole life. In the big book on page 55, in the chapter We Ignostics, it says, we have found that the great reality is deep down inside every man and woman. And so for me, what that really means is my higher power is the great reality, but this journey isn't out there.
I always thought it was, it's inside. And the 12 steps, there's only three steps that mention other people. The rest mention my relationship with my higher power and myself. So I recommitted to AA, started going to Al-Anon, that resilient alcoholic ego, the grandiose one. I'm sitting in my Al-Anon meeting, it's about four years in Al-Anon.
And at that particular meeting at that time, it was a literature meeting and I was the only double winner in the meeting. The rest were all pure Al-Anons, right? And I'm sitting there like, these people don't know anything. They don't know how serious this disease is. They really haven't worked the steps.
You know, I'm a double winner, I know a lot. And that could just, but ego's just the hedge, just getting full of air, right? And as I'm sitting, taking everybody in the room's inventory and I'm not making this up. I mean, there's a lot of voices in my head, but usually my higher power, when he wants to get my attention, it's the loudest one in my head. And I hear this voice that says, you know, Dennis, in order to be a double winner, you first had to be a two-time loser.
And you could just, like the air was like shooting out of my ears, I was like a balloon, flying around the room. One of the things that really changed the trajectory of my recovery, so I've been around almost 40 years. I came in as a punk rocker. I don't, it's a, I'm a miracle. I don't have any tattoos after 40 years.
I'm an outlier in AA. But I do have one thing tattooed on my heart and that's the St. Francis prayer. And that prayer changed my life. And there's only two prayers in AA and Al-Anon literature that are in both Kann's of literature and that's the Serenity prayer and the St.
Francis prayer. And at my first meeting in Al-Anon, I must have looked desperate. I know I was desperate. I know I was like my cheese had slid off the cracker. I wasn't drinking, but I was miserable.
You could see it on my face. And God loved this old-timer patch. She moved out of the area. I think everybody else was scared of me. But she came up and she put the newcomer packet in my hand, but she opened up and she ripped out that just for today bookmark.
And she said, you know, there's a lot of literature here in Al-Anon, but if you just read this every morning and try to do one or two things and say the prayer on the back, it'll get better and I want a relief. And so I did that and I still do that. And what I found it, because I'm thick-headed and I have a lot of ideas and usually the first one's wrong, but meditating on that prayer after a while, I realized what higher powers will is for me. And this is just my opinion. Take it or leave it.
But meditating on that prayer, the first line says, make me a channel of my peace. And that's God's will for me at any time, every day, all day, all the time. And spoiler alert, it's God's will for you too, is what I believe. And the rest of the prayers or the prayer are instructions on how to not be in peace and how to get back into peace. So it gives you a list of opposites where there's hatred, let me bring love.
Well, love is a power from God. Hatred is kind of what I manifest when I'm in my disease. Where there's wrong, let me bring a spirit of forgiveness. Where there's discord, let me bring harmony. Where there's error, let me bring truth.
Where there's doubt, let me bring faith. Where there's despair, let me bring hope. Where there are shadows, let me bring light. And where there's sadness, let me bring joy. And interesting little side note, joy is a very, one of my higher powers, best powers that I can call on.
And I think that it's your best power as well because it's written all over the AA and Al-Anon literature. In fact, the first sentence in chapter 12 on the 12th step says the joy of living is the theme of AA's 12th step. And in the Al-Anon literature, if you pick up from survival to recovery, the chapter where the Al-Anon gifts are mentioned, that chapter is called joy is our birthright. So it's a choice I make, right? The left side of that column are all my character defects.
So I can choose to live in my defects or I can exercise my free will and surrender. And when Shelley was speaking, there's only three truths that I've learned here that I can say are 100% true. There's a loving higher power who cares for me. I'm frequently wrong and I know how to surrender. So time in this program, some people think it's quality, quantity, whatever.
It's just the ability to raise the right, the white flag at the right time. And I do it a lot. And there's a lot of grace in that. The rest of that prayer though, if I do that prayer and I call on my higher power, I'm better able to understand you than have you understand me, well, let me tell you something. You don't understand me.
No, I can just listen. I can just listen. I don't have to respond. I can give comfort instead of waiting for you to do something for me. I can forgive you instead of waiting for you to forgive me first.
And I can forget myself instead of thinking how great I am. And the interesting thing about that prayer, kind of like the beginning of how it works, where there's honesty as mentioned three times before the steps, in the St. Francis prayer, there's two words and they both appear three times. First word is love. Who doesn't want more love in their life?
So that seems pretty reasonable to me to ask my higher power to bring love into my life. But the other word is forgiveness. It's mentioned three times. Of all the powers forgiveness is mentioned three times. Why is that?
Well, in order to love, I have to learn how to forgive a lot. In the Al-Anon gifts, if you go to Al-Anon, they have their own gifts, little funny side note. The first time I got asked to read at an Alon meeting, I referred to them as the Al-Anon promises, and this black belt Al-Anon came up to me, after the meeting shows, we don't have promises in this program. That's the other program. That's the eighth program.
We have gifts, we have gifts. So I'm very careful with language, depending on which meeting I'm in these days. But one of the Al-Anon gifts says, as we learn to forgive our families, ourselves and the world, our choices will expand. And I had to learn how to do that by saying the St. Francis prayer.
And I have a lot to forgive because I can really beat up on myself when I fall short of the mark. I don't know about anybody else. I see a few heads nodding, but negative self talk comes part and parcel with my disease. And once I start talking negative to me, well, then it's really easy to take your inventory. In fact, it's almost a given, right?
And then I can get that whole list of negative attributes that are in that St. Francis prayer, I'm off and running. But the whole key is just to stop and notice and then come right back to that prayer. And I know I don't have much time left, so I do wanna close with this. There's a couple of people that are gonna come up and read some things.
But one of the gifts I was given, it says in our literature that particularly on page 87 talks about the daily practice of prayer and meditation. And it suggested that if we don't know how to do this, we might wanna consult some clergy, men or women. Talk to your rabbi, talk to your priest, talk to a minister, they might have some suggestions, try some different prayers. So I've done a lot of that. And I'm open to a lot of different regressions because in my higher powers, the great reality and in the great reality, my higher power doesn't really care what your creed is or what your name is for the great reality.
It's really all about spirituality. So I've spent a bit of time, 45 miles south of here at a hermitage in Big Sur with the monks. And those men taught me how to pray, they taught me how to meditate. And when you go into any one of the rooms and you go down there on retreat, their founder, St. Romul, he has what he calls his brief rule for monks, but it also works for drunks too.
You don't have to get among them. And for Alonance. And I'm not gonna quote the whole thing, but it's kind of tattooed on my heart as well. But the first line says, sit in your room as if you're in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it.
Watch your thoughts like a fisherman watching for fish. Empty yourself, sit waiting for the grace of God. Like the chick that tastes nothing or eats nothing, but what its mother gives to it. And that really has been my practice for the last 27 years on a daily basis. And those monks gave me, they taught me that after a person spends time in prayer and meditation, which spoiler alert, that's what we're doing right now folks, if you sat in a meeting and you paid attention, we're gonna get to pray, actually we're gonna get to pray three times because there's gonna be an Alonance prayer and an AA prayer I think.
So we're gonna get to pray three times. And if you pay attention, you're meditating. And our 12 step says, having had a spiritual awakening, we carry this message to others, practices, principles and all our affairs. So we take this power that we get, that I get, and we're instructed to share it with the world because then my great reality gets bigger in all four dimensions. And there's a word in the spiritual tradition that they call it the dedication of merit.
It's dedicating the merit of whatever spiritual awakening, spiritual benefit you get from your practice, giving it to others. And that really is the spirit of our 12 step. But they taught me this little dedication of merit and I wanna close with this. May all be happy, may all be free from disease. May all realize what is good, may no one be in misery.
May the non-virtuous be virtuous. That kinda sounds like a step six to me. May the virtuous attain tranquility. May the tranquil be freed from the bonds of death and may the freed make others free. And thanks for letting me be a service.