The great thing about listening to speakers who’ve gained some reputation in a program that preaches anonymity, is that one can go along thinking he’s heard them all.
Then you suddenly stumble onto a new speaker with a new perspective and new tag lines, only to find out your “discovery” has been around for a while and a lot of other people have heard of him or her even if you haven’t.

Such is my experience with Ken D., originally from Brooklyn, NY, but now part of the Southern California AA community (most of whom, one can only conclude, have recorded their story, their insights and a multi-disk Big Book Study; available soon at an AA convention near you).

Ken is as entertaining a speaker as I have heard in AA. Not only is he funny (he’s “unscarred by education”; if you say “look at the dead bird”, he and his friends all look up; in his neighbourhood most people think Moby Dick is a venereal disease; he went to jail because he “kept finding things that weren’t lost yet.”); he also uses these God given powers to amuse in order to frame and/or put into a new light the recovery lessons he’s learned: we’re “rocketed into a fourth dimension” because since we think in three dimensions, taking us to a fourth dimension is the only way you can get us to stop thinking; we’re good thinkers, but sometimes “we scratch shit that just doesn’t itch”; a new born rhinoceros has already “reached the quintessence of “rhinocerosity”, whereas humans are required to keep moving, growing, and to keep “becoming”.

Here is a link to Ken D. in Nebraska

The weird thing is, having listened to the same speech (recorded in Nebraska in 1998) three times over the past three days I have a hard time discerning a theme or message in Ken’s speech. It’s very light on drunkalog, and very heavy on the Big Book.
He touches on the steps and makes reference to the necessity for taking them, but except for a specific reference to Step 3, he speaks of them collectively, not separately.
One might conclude that my inability to summarize Ken’s message reflects negatively on this talk. Nothing could be more inaccurate.

I think that there is so much in this one 57 minute tape that one has to go back to it again and again. As I write this essay I’ve gone back searching for quotes and wound up hearing passages I’d evidently missed completely the first few times I listened.
This happens not so much because I have the attention span of a clam, but because Ken has the power to make me think and send me off on tangents into areas I’d not considered before-which is odd, considering his observation that the scariest thing an alky can say is “I’ve been thinking”.

Ultimately, like no other speaker I’ve heard over the past few years, Ken D need’s to be heard and experienced, not analyzed. Give him a try. And if you find other tapes of his, please let me know. Dicobe is offering a new tape this month, but if there are other sources available please let us know.

GL

Open-mindedness “Growth”

While open-mindedness is supposedly virtuous, many of us have difficulty with it. In our drinking, we continued to suffer because we were unwilling to believe that anything could relieve us of our condition. We also feared that change would diminish us.

Our great liberation came in opening up our minds to new ideas. This same process might be needed to sober living. We may have an investment in old attitudes and ideas that are keeping us from constructive growth. Without giving up our attitudes immediately, we can at least give new ideas that hones consideration and study.

True open-mindedness does not mean empty-mindedness. We still can have strong convictions, consistent values, and definite opinions. But in the spirit of open-mindedness, we should continuously reexamine our views and adopt new ideas for improvement and growth.
Open-mindedness helped bring us to sobriety. It can also open the doors to other blessings that will bring enrichment and happiness.
Affirmation:
I will be open-minded and curious today. New ideas can bring wonderful benefits to me if I am willing to consider them.

No Coincidences

The early history of AA still sparkles with fortunate coincidences that moved the fellowship forward. It was miraculous, for example, that Bill W’s telephone call in 1935 was to a woman who “just happened” to know Dr. Bob, a suffering alcoholic.

When we are in tune with AA’s spiritual program, we know with absolute certainty that there really are no coincidences. Our Higher Power is in charge and all things really are working together for good, even though this is not always apparent at first. If we let this Higher Power guide and direct our lives, we will be thrilled and delighted by a number of wonder coincidences.
We may happen to pick up the magazine or book that gives us information and meet a person whose advice changes our lives. Or we follow a hunch and make an unusual decision that leads to a number of opportunities we never dreamed of.

We cannot force these fortunate “coincidences” to happen or direct their course, except by following the program every day. But we never need fret about the future if we have placed our lives in God’s hands. There are no coincidences…. Only the hand of God ceaselessly at work.
I will work this day as if everything depended on me, but at the same time I will know that everything really depends on God.

Hi, it’s Audrey, — a blessed alcoholic. I permanently returned to work today, my 75th day of sobriety — what a great day!

You see, I was very sick; too sick to work, too sick to live, and certainly too sick to grin from ear to ear, as I am right now.
I came to the rooms of AA from my hospital bed after driving my car into a train. I thought wow, I might need some help. What I got was not only help, it was salvation. The message carried to me in working the Steps with my sponsor, was and is, the beginning of my life.

Everything I do, say, think, or feel — every person I come in contact with — has been altered because of my relationship with God. I find myself thinking all the time now, “Wow! That really just happened,” when I used to think all the time, “WOW! That really just happened, AGAIN?” I’m able to call loved ones with good news.

I’m able to share my love on a deeper level than ever before. I’m able to live and be happy all because of one little step — Step Three. I am grateful to my sponsor and I guess we all know how well he spread the true message to his sponsee, because I’m alive, and well, and I’m ready to share that message.
Thanks for listening.

I drove up to the local club parking lot, finishing up a phone call, and glanced up to see my most 24-hr-chipped sponsee wandering the parking lot in circles.
I wonder if I ever did that. The boy just can’t not drink, and my heart goes out to him.
He came up to me after the meeting with a happy grin and greeted me, and I said a polite hello and asked him why he hadn’t spoken up in the meeting. He said he hadn’t had a drink today, so he didn’t think he needed to. I asked him if he was still as miserable as he said he was when he called me this morning;
he said yes and hung his head.

I told him (again… hundredth time maybe? ) All you have to do is open your mouth and say to the group: “I can’t stop drinking, I’m afraid, and I don’t want anybody’s help.” ….and that — the Truth! — will set you free!
I didn’t believe it either when I was suicidal and drinking every day. Then I did it. It works.

Releasing the Past

The past might be holding you back

Computer programmers use a certain expression when their systems turn up errors: “GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT.” If you feed erroneous, useless information into a computer, that’s what you get back.

We seem to have built-in computers that work the same way. If we waste time and energy talking about past injustices or old mistakes, we are unwittingly calling them back into our lives. We are bringing back garbage that should have been discarded permanently to make room for better things.

There is no benefit in bringing back old garbage. We can’t change the past. We can’t change our mistakes by brooding about them, and we can’t obtain justice by remembering how badly we were treated, or by plotting revenge. When we bring back garbage, we allow it to occupy space that should be devoted to constructive and positive things.
If we don’t want garbage in our lives, let’s not put it there by bringing up matters that should have been released, forgiven, and forgotten.
Affirmation:
I will keep my mind on the present, knowing that a positive attitude will help me make the best of the opportunities that come to me.

A sponsee is drunk. I just got off the phone with him, and he wanted to come meet me for a previously-scheduled dinner. I asked him not to drive if he’d been drinking… and then there was this long pause on the other end of the phone and he simply said “ok Tom.”

I was in a great meeting this morning (is there such a thing as a bad meeting ?). One of us (one of me ?) picked up a twenty-four hour chip.
He reminds me of myself when I kept drinking even after coming into the rooms, not comprehending, that the first drink really did get me drunk. One drink — one sip — and I’ve just gained admission into possibly the last binge of my life. If I ever take that drink, I’m certain that I’ll be suicidal again within days. I lived enough years like that to remember. And I don’t want it back, thanks.

By the grace of God, I’ve been without that first drink today. And I can look in the mirror and be grateful and proud that I’ve got a nice little string of todays goin’. I’m just plain thrilled that I have a choice today.

Don’t drink. The power of choice is yours today as long as there ain’t no booze in ya. As soon as there’s a drop in, something else is choosing, and the disease will win. Just for today I get to say NO to the first sip. ahhh…. sweet sobriety!

I’m Amber, an alcoholic. I won’t lie; I have cast the first stone on occasions. I don’t live in a glass house, and I have at times looked at people and said, “Thank God I don’t have what you have,” or — look around to see who has what I want.

Well, I asked, how do I do that if I am not supposed to take others’ inventories? I was told the secret is to sign it — if you do it, own it. And then be careful what stones you throw because boulders may be on your porch in the morning.
Sometimes we take the inventories of others because we are feeling inadequate. Sometimes we are feeling superior, but I have to keep in mind we are all drunks trying to get well. I don’t pretend to understand our Higher Power’s reason; I just try and do Her will. And yes, I said “Her” — you may call HP “Him” or “It,” but we all have One we answer to at the end of the day. I know at the end of the day, I really hate making amends, so I try to keep my side of the street clean. If I am vicious or rude or just downright mean when I point something out about someone I don’t like, where should I look? Well, when I point a finger at someone else, there are 3 pointing back at me.

My mentors and I used to sit at a coffee shop and take each other’s inventories, and we all learned something. It was an exercise to see if I could look at myself and know that the problem lies with me. I was jealous a lot of time, or insecure — and I hated that; I felt weak. Then I figured out if I was able to turn to HP and be honest, I could work on me. And isn’t that what we are here for? We do this together, and sometimes we are human; humans have flaws. I have to remind myself I am a human being on a spiritual journey — not a saint trying to be human.

I make mistakes, but do I have to courage to own them? Do I have the heart to accept what doesn’t make sense to me? And do I believe a HP speaks through all of you? Yes. I can answer yes as I sit here right now. Tomorrow? Well, we will see. But for now I know I owe an amends and I will take care of it, because at the end of the day I want my side of the street clean.
If no one tells you they love you today, know I love you. Thanks for letting me be a part of.

When No One Is Watching- Joseph Hayes

Rather than re-running one of my older essays on AA Speakers-which has been my practice recently- this week my topic is a book I just finished (whose title and author are the headline of this week’s column). I loved this book, not just for its accurate depiction of the AA/ Recovery experience, but also because reading it was as entertaining as it was (and this is an overused word in our world but it applies here) inspiring. That the setting is in Chicago, and filled with recognizable landmarks, accounts for my initial enthusiasm, but it doesn’t account for why I picked up the book at 5PM and finished it, uninterrupted, 300+ pages and five or so hours later. You could say it held my attention, but if you said I couldn’t put it down, you’d be using a cliché´ I’ve been trying to avoid for 15 minutes.

Last weekend I visited the annual “Book Fest on Printers Row” just south of the loop in Chicago. I attend this outing annually looking for nothing in particular, yet always come home with books I either simply had to have, or books too cheap to pass up. Neither description fits “When No One Is Watching”. From across the street, stuck on a side corner, Joseph Hayes appeared to be promoting some self-published, self-contradicting testimony to his own insight.
But as I walked by, avoiding eye contact, his hand scribbled sign,

“Dedicated to the Silent Heroes of AA”

jumped out, if only because it left hanging the question as to why us loud mouthed AA’s weren’t getting our due?

OK, I’m an easy sell, and a sucker for AA memorabilia, which is what I thought I was buying once I succumbed to eye contact. But I spoke with Joe, and the book’s cover was a little higher quality than vanity press stuff, and it had won a few awards. Plus, his connection to AA, if not personal, seemed legit, and sincere. Plus, I’m probably more likely to read a novel, than that 900-page translation of “The Works of Josephus” I’d picked ($5ºº!!) in order to raise the ante in my game of High Brow Book Shelf Hold ‘em. So I bought it, at LIST price I might add, (its on Amazon.com and you won’t pay what I did), and moved on to find more “treasures”, and talk my wife out of that cook book on vegetarian Thanksgiving dinners.

Joseph Hayes

And, to be fair, AA/Recovery is only one side of the story. The main plot also focuses on the career of a Chicago machine politician whose rise to power inversely reflects his best friend’s descent into powerlessness. How this takes place is why I couldn’t stop reading. The details, the pacing, and the plot itself do not appear to be the product of a first time author. This is a true storyteller who knows how to keep things moving, who uses details to fill in the gaps of his characters and his plot, and who can evoke emotions that will, if I’m any indicator, lay waste to half a box of tissues before you’re done.

That said I have to confess I struggled with the first few chapters during which the author found no word so clear it couldn’t benefit from an adjective or adverb. But the “L” and “Y” on his keyboard probably gave out, either that or the plot caught me up so much I forsook my role as editor, and I didn’t notice a superfluous modifier the rest of the way. I’m hardly a literary critic and, as I learned hanging around you guys, this small knit to pick may be more about me than it is the book’s or the author’s style.
Too often in AA we beat newcomers over the head with program focused reading that can be overstated, uninteresting, and at least to the beginner, pointless. We tell them there’s fun to be had in AA, and then send them off to read textbooks.

“When No One Is Watching” by Joseph Hayes is no textbook, but in reading it, the newcomer, as well as the old timer, can learn a lot about practicing the principals of AA, and what it means to do the right thing, even when no one is watching.

Toward the end of my drinking, it was pretty much round-the-clock — for breakfast it was shots of whatever left-over rot-gut scotch I had lying around from the night before (had to get some kind of booze in me if I wanted to even think about food staying down), and then had to grab a beer or two at lunch to get me through, and then.. well you know what the “and then…” means to an alkie.

I was sharing today at the Friday meeting I chair. It felt good to remember that stray day here and there in the middle of my weeks-long binges, that day where for whatever reason God chose to conspire so that I’d stay sober for 24 hours. It didn’t happen often during those last years, but man, it felt good when it did. And then that first drink to break the spell…. It always felt bizarre, almost surreal, and the sky always seemed very bright… until I stepped in with my Will.

Today there were thunderstorms here in the morning — strange weather for Virginia in January. All day long it felt like I’d just come out of a hangover, for just a minute… and that blessed light-of-possibility shone through odd-grey skies. I was grateful that I hadn’t taken a drink.

I bet if I could hang on to that sense of gratitude, that sense of wonder that goes along with looking around at the Universe with brand new eyes, I’d hold on to this moment of Grace like it was the most precious sliver of sobriety I ever knew. God help me that I can cherish my moments in just this way, one at a time.
Have a Here Now This Perfect-in-the-Moment weekend, without a drink. Peace, Tom