So Hey everybody, my name is Wes. My last name is Hamill. I’m using my full name for reason because I don’t see any, you know, paparazzi or TV crews here. The reason I’m using my last name is because I’m in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, and you might need to find me. I don’t know if anybody Have you ever been in a meeting? And you meet somebody, man, I really like what Bob had to say. And Bob gives you the phone number, and you call Bob, and it’s his place of work, and you say, can I talk to Bob? And they go, we got 11 of them here. And you don’t know Bob’s last name, and you don’t feel real comfortable going, well, could you ask around and find out which one’s the alcohol here? So my last name is Hamill. It’s easy to remember, H, A, M, I, L, like the guy remember in Star Wars, Mark Hamill. But Mark Hamill has two L’s. I only have one which, to me, explains everything I am 1l short of the force.
1:29 Just know that about me. Go in it.
Dave was amazing, although halfway through his his bit, I was thinking I should tell Dave my sobriety date and see if he can just give my talk my work, he was pretty impressive. My sobriety day is November 20, 1991 I was just shy of my 33rd birthday. Thank you. You’re clapping for alcoholics anonymous in my higher power when you do that, just so you know, just shy of my 33rd birthday, you can do the math from there. And so I’m coming up on 34 years, they say God willing. God’s willing. Ain’t about God’s willingness. It’s all about my willingness. Thanks for asking me to speak. It’s a privilege get to be here, and I’m not here just for the dessert, although, thank God they brought the dessert. I could just see a room full of Alcoholics Anonymous. Go ahead. Speaker starts and you haven’t gotten your dessert. I mean, the first 15 minutes of my talk would be consumed with the resentment flowing through the room about not getting dessert.
2:53 I grew up in Texas. I grew up in a hard drinking culture, man, it’s all about drinking. We had a saying. Growing up around my family, water was perfectly fine liquid for washing your car with you didn’t want to drink it. That’s why God made beer and I drank. Started drinking from an early age, and I was not raised in a I was not raised in the bosom of nurture, not my story.
3:34 I was hiding from the minute. I knew that if I hid from what was going on around me, I might get through the day without a bruise or or the worst kind of thing that I think anybody can have visited upon them, which is the intellectual and emotional and psychological terror of growing up In an alcoholic household, because I tell you what, any bruise I ever got from getting beaten when I was a child healed up a lot faster than the scars of growing up in an environment where it was more like this. Was long before the TV show survivor, okay, but I was on an island. It was a little island named Wes, and I was trying to be a survivor, and I was scared. And I used to think it took years into sobriety. I used to think I was scared of the world outside me. It was you guys I was scared of. But that was not true. It finally hit me, after countless inventories and a long time in recovery, I was scared of me.
4:51 I was scared I wasn’t enough. Okay?
I was scared of me. I was scared of me living with you, less. About You, more about me. Thankfully, what I’ve learned in Alcoholics Anonymous is that you have the solution for me. The pronoun that got mentioned we, it’s not French, it’s not small, W, E, E, we is the solution for me. That’s important for me to know about Alcoholics Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous, the answer to the problem of me is weak. I learned that here. So I started drinking. I drank, you know, I really in Texas in those days, you know, back when they were making dirt, because I’m just about that old, they you could drink legally at 18 years of age. This was awesome, because I turned 18 my senior year in high school. The solution to the senior year in high school was being able to drink. And so I did. Man, I drank my way through my senior year, got out on my own. I got a hint from the loving family. They moved when I was in my senior year in high school. They got everything moved in, all the furniture, all the alcohol, not in that order.
6:18 I went, I said, Well, I got a brother and sister. I see a bedroom for them. I see bedroom for mom and dad. I go, Where do I sleep? Here in the family domicile? And they went, well, you’re 18, right? I go, Yeah. And they go, Well, if you feel like you really must live, still live with us. We got a walk in closet.
6:39 So I took the hand and I headed off on my own. I met a young lady just before my 19th birthday, who I ended up marrying, who is still my wife, whose sobriety date is 60 days after my sobriety day. If I really want to piss her off. I can tell her in 60 days is low, makes sense. I can start a conversation with that one.
7:13 I don’t say that very often, and I’ll tell you, but I got sober that that woman introduced me to the man that became my sponsor. So what happened is, I’m drinking, I’m drinking. I’m drinking. And here’s what happened to me early on. I don’t know if any of you guys drank like this, guys and gals or whatever pronoun, because hey, if alcohol don’t care what your pronouns are, it’ll kill you all the same. Why should I care? Why should I care?
7:45 So I’m sitting there, and I, early on, started drinking with a death wish. There was something about me that when I looked in the mirror, I just never, ever was comfortable with who I saw. I was never comfortable with who I saw. Now, I grew up in the area, era of, like, the really moody, deep thinking, you know, singer songwriters. And I thought, hey, this would be cool. I’ll be a, I want to be a man of mystery. I’ll be the mysterious poet type, and I succeeded in the mystery. In this regard, I was a mystery, but pretty much only to myself.
8:31 I mean, I was clueless, but I drank with a death wish. I mean, when I drank, I freaking drank. Okay, there was no half measures to my drinking. And so I’m drinking along, and I meet this young lady, and she’s, she’s like that, uh, she’s like that, gout. Remember, those of you of a certain age will know the original first Raiders of the Lost Ark movie, and Karen Allen is in that opening of that movie, and she’s drinking the knot. She’s drinking everybody under the table. Nobody can keep up with her drinking. I married that gal, and we there, we were, off and running. And you know, I was, and still am, although it’s a dubious title to have these days with the business the way it is, but I have been a professional musician for decades and a professional songwriter, and this factors into my sponsor story here in a second. And that was a great business, man, because nobody wanted to pay you any money to play in the closet, but they let you drink free all night, man, and I got my money’s worth. So I’m drinking. I’m drinking. I’m drinking with this death wish. I I got darker, and I was a dark drunk. I mean dark like I got that moody, dark, brooding kind of thing. Now I was, I didn’t. Like, out at people, you know, I didn’t get in fights. I didn’t, you know, I was just like, well, they’re just too stupid to go fight with, you know, because I was the smartest guy in the room. And you know, the story behind the smartest guy in the room? If you are the smartest guy in the room, you are in the wrong so, you know, here I was big, intellectual, brain, deep mystery, mostly to myself, drinking with a death wish.
10:29 And my wife and I, we had a recording studio in Austin, Texas, and you know, my drinking was unremarkable. I drank. I drank to the point where I was okay. I drank to the point where, here’s what I was like right before I got sober, I weighed 20 pounds more than I weigh right now.
10:55 I had a rash from my Adam’s apple to about my mid thighs from alcohol poisoning. My liver could not process alcohol anymore. If I didn’t have alcohol around at night, in the middle of the night, I didn’t know what DTS were, you know, I would start shaking. I would start shaking. I’d have to grab some alcohol just to we had a saying in Texas. You know about beer, we go it’s good even rodeo cold, which means hot. So I’d have a rodeo cold beer by my nightstand, and I’d grab that thing in the middle of the night, and God forbid I didn’t have some alcohol, because it was going to be a rough night. So I lost the lease on that recording studio. I have no idea, by the way, how long I’m supposed to I mean, I know it’s past bedtime here with it. I don’t know how long I’m supposed to talk. And I’d lost it. I’d lost the deal in my recording studio. And I, I go, Well, you know, the problem is Austin, Texas. That’s the problem. Clearly, it was Austin’s fault. Just, I could have stopped with just Texas. It’s Texas, being a native Texan. So LA, here I come, and I come to LA, where I promptly discover Trader Joe’s and the, you know, 32 bottles of wine for $9 or whatever they did back in 1990 and I drank my way through Hollywood. And, you know, I spent my first year getting really, really, really, so close to death. But had no idea here’s how close to death I got going to tell you about the night before I went to my first meeting, but before I went to my first meeting, I got 12 step by the guy who’s now my sponsor. Here’s how that happened. Let’s bring the wife back into the story. Now we have been together since 1977 that’s a few years we’ve been sober together, more than twice as long as we were together drinking. The reason I’m telling you that is people sometimes think that’s not possible in Alcoholics Anonymous, when couples get sober, and there’s a lot of stories about couples breaking up, but here’s what I can tell you, 12 traditions.
13:24 If you work the 12 traditions, in my experience, in any relationship, but especially business and close personal relationships, you got a real shot. You got a real shot. The 12 traditions are spectacular as a guide for me to get along with all you, which you think I would, because we are the same species. But you know, I have this brain that will somehow tell me that there’s differences between us that really aren’t there. Okay, so here I am in Los Angeles, damn near drinking myself to death. My wife, who couldn’t be here tonight, God bless her, because she’s just got, she’s got that same disease that Celine Dion has. It’s a really rare disease. And sometimes she gets up and she can just go, and sometimes she can’t get up. And sadly, tonight was one of those, I can’t get up nights, but she wanted to be here, and she’s with me wherever I go. So we’re sitting there. She’s working as dental assistant, and this guy comes in and he’s wearing a circle and triangle earring, exactly like the one I’m wearing. And here’s the deal. I was wearing a different circle and triangle earring when I showed up here tonight, and then I saw for sale out there the exact same circle and triangle earring that my sponsor was wearing the night my or the day my wife met him, and I bought that earring so I could wear it to. Up. So my wife is she’s demo assisting in Beverly Hills now my sponsor, who also uses his full name and taught me all about doing that so that you could find me if you need I am so easy to find. Remember Star Wars guy, 1l Wes Hamill, you can find me. Did I say that? Because I have had people find me from you know, sometimes I’ve been recorded, right? And people have heard me talk on the internet. I have gotten emails from Sweden going, I heard your thing on the internet. Would you talk to me about sobriety? I’m like, hell yeah. I need to be where you can find me. Okay, that’s why I give you my friend. His name is Paul Williams. He’s a very successful songwriter and singer, and he was in the dental chair, and my wife looks at him as he’s sitting there going, and she sees a circle and triangle. She goes, I know what that is.
16:05 And he thinking, he’s found a fellow traveler, right? Because really. And she launches into, like, 17 minutes on the origin of a circle and triangle symbol that’s 2000 years old. That is the man seeking unity, the circle with God and all. And he’s like, very patiently going, and she gets through all the storytelling, and he says, Well, that’s fascinating. He was probably lying. And he said, he said, For me, it’s a symbol of a fellowship that I belong to. Well, we don’t drink and use one day at a time. And then he asked the money question. He asked her, do you have problem with drink? Now, remember I described her as the Karen Allen character, drinking everybody under the table, right? You know. And God bless her for her answer, because she said, Oh no, but you should talk to my husband.
17:11 God bless that woman for that. So she gave her my phone number. And you know what I do for a living is such as is, is not really important. I mean, it doesn’t really matter what we do for what I do for a living is I freaking stay sober and help other alcoholics. And in between doing that, I do other stuff. Okay? That’s what I do for a living. That’s why I Emily, okay, so anyway, she played a little cassette tape, okay, of a song I’d written for this guy. But she gets, you know, that’s his curse for being famous, at doing something like that. And he so he and then she calls me, and she says, I met Paul Williams today. Now I grew up seeing this guy on TV, man, you know, I mean, I knew who this guy was. And she goes, I played him your song. I’m like, wow, why am I telling you that? It’s really important. I’m telling you that not because I wrote a song, millions of songs in the world. It’s because when he called me and said, Hi, this is Paul Williams, I thought it was a prank, and then he sang me my own song that was brilliant. You want to hook an alcoholic, go straight for the ego. I was like, but that’s also why I knew it wasn’t a joke, because I knew the only other person on the planet who had heard that song was my wife. Here’s a hint for all you, you know, all you people yearning for a creative life, if you do your creative work and you don’t show it or play it for anybody, it’s not going to go well. But I’m an alcoholic, which means I’m living in terror, which means if you don’t like something I did, maybe that’s life or death to me, right? Gotta have people love me at all costs, when the whole time I want the world to love me, I’m trying to kill myself. If that’s not a state of pretty serious emotional and spiritual confusion, I don’t know what is that that is this guy, untreated alcoholism. That is me and my disease, maybe some of you too.
19:45 So he calls up, and he says, Hey, I hear you here. You like to drink after he finishes singing to me, and I know it’s really him. And I said, I’ve stopped. As I had See, this is what has started happening to me. I would quit for these I used to call them sobriety binges. I did not know what sobriety meant. Clearly, I didn’t really know what a binge meant, but I think I heard somebody say it somewhere. So I had my little sobriety binges. And those sobriety binges were these little brief periods of time where I would not drink alcohol, and part of me kind of was wondering if I was an alcoholic, but because I would stop for a week, sometimes I stopped once up to six months. Okay, I wasn’t drinking, my brain said, Well, I’m not drinking, so I must not be an alcoholic, said the man who knew nothing about alcoholism, the disease of alcoholism, okay, and in that time, I learned I have a name for this now, and I would love to tell you I’ve never experienced this in sobriety, but I’d be lying. I call it sodriety. It is all the abstinence and none of the recovery that is a special place in hell.
21:15 Okay, sobriety, and I have had it without using substances, which is part of what lets me know that alcohol and alcoholism is cunning, baffling and powerful, because if I don’t stay in the process of doing which I’m about to start, we’re giving you that part of my story. If I don’t stay in what you guys have taught me to do, I will be living in sodriety Instead of sobriety, because abstinence is the guy, as it says in our book that comes out and says, ain’t Graham, the wind stopping. We feel a man is unthinking when he says, smear sobriety is enough. That’s what they’re talking about. They’re talking about sodriety. Okay, so I’m in a little sodriti state. And I go, I’m not drinking. He goes, Really, what meetings are you going to and I’m like, meetings, let me what are these meetings you speak of? And he goes, You know, I’ve got to go off to London to teach Michael Caine how to sing in this movie called The Muppet Movie Christmas Carol. He said, When I get back, we’re going to have dinner and you’re going to tell me all about how you’re staying sober and not going to meetings. I said, done. I stayed sober for 30 days. So dry. He’s sober. I was stark raving dry by the time that guy got back. Now, why? Why I didn’t drink and just lie about it? I don’t know. I guess that was my ego working for me just enough and I was crazy. So here’s the night before I went to my first meeting, I sat on the edge of my bed in a little apartment down in Koreatown, down in Central LA, not far from what used to be the Ambassador Hotel and I, having moved out from Texas, was properly equipped, so I pulled out a 38 caliber Derringer that was loaded, and I cocked it, and I put it about as far from my forehead is this microphone is from my mouth, and I stared down the barrel of that pistol, and I had a conversation with myself about my solution, which is going to be To pull that trigger. Okay, I was dying from a disease I did not know I had, and I was drowning in self pity. I would not know that. That’s what that was, until a couple of years of sobriety and some serious inventory work. And here’s what saved me. I started thinking about my wife. I’m thinking she’s going to come in. She’s going to walk in the door of this apartment. She’s going to see me splattered all over this bedroom. She’s going to have to deal with a mess. She’s going to have to call the three people left on the planet that might remotely care that I did this.
24:18 And I used to joke, because it was funny that codependency saved my life in that moment, but that’s not what saved my life. Two things saved my life, love saved my life, and a higher power that I did not know I had and did not know I was connected to saved my life. And the way that higher power saved my life, and I have had this happen over and over and over again in almost 34 years of recovery my higher power, the genius of my higher power is that it will communicate to me in whatever way I can understand in that moment. So if somebody had come into the. Little room down there. And that kind of grew then. Back then in 1991 you know, that was pretty grungy part of Wilson Boulevard, and started going step one. We admitted we were power several alcohol, our lives have become I’d have just gone boom. It would have been like those peanuts cartoons where the grown ups talk, right? Step one, step two. I mean, it would have meant nothing to me. What meant something to me was hurting my wife. My higher power knew that that is the language my higher power put in my head and my heart, and I listened, and my wife came in. She came in through the door, she looked at me. She goes, You scare me. Why don’t you go to one of those meetings Paul told you about, and I was, I was a spiritual giant. In that moment, I said, if it will get you off my ass, I’ll go do Yeah, just telling the truth here. I’m not flattered by this, okay, but that’s who I was.
26:11 The next day, I went to a place called the log cabin. There’s a real log cabin, if you’re ever down in Los Angeles, it’s off Robertson Boulevard, between Melrose and Santa Monica, maybe the only actual log cabin in Los Angeles. And I had a plan. And my plan was I was going to pull up, I was going to drive by the meeting. Kind of wave at it, go home, tell my wife I went to the meeting. Happy. But for some reason, there was a parking spot right open right in front of me. My car fit that parking spot perfectly. I went. I got out of the car, I started up the steps. I was kind of tentative, and this really, really skinny African American guy reaches out his hand to me, and he grabs my hand, and he says, Welcome. And it felt like he pulled me into that room of Alcoholics Anonymous. It was like I’m on the concrete outside, and suddenly I’m in the room. How did that happen? And then, oh, wow. Then what? Then I’m looking around, right? Everybody’s got coffee. I got eight cents in my pocket. Don’t want to embarrass myself by not being able to buy the coffee I’m standing looking around. Sure everybody’s looking at me. It’s an Alcoholics Anonymous. Nobody is looking at me. They’re thinking about themselves. They’re talking to their friends. They’re not looking at the bewildered soul that’s standing in the front door. I figure out no cash is going down for the coffee. I get my coffee. I sit in a chair, one of these crappy, beat up folding metal chairs at 730 in the morning, and my life changed forever.
27:57 A man spoke about big, tall, manly man, and he’s talking and he’s going, man, I was scared alive, and I was angry. I didn’t know how to deal with my feelings and all these things. I’m like, This is me, man, this is me. And he’s talking, and he’s like, five years sober, and which is, like, unfathomable, and he’s just going through all this stuff, and he’s telling this story, and I’m like, This is my twin. This guy is, like, my twin. My twin was a six foot, three inch tall, African American man that was the road manager for Aerosmith. You know why he was my twin, because he spoke. There’s a beautiful book in Alcoholics Anonymous called the language of the heart. If you haven’t read it, get it. It’s fantastic. I heard a great saying years into recovery from a man who’s now long gone. When I lived in Denver, he said, If you stick around alcoholics, anonymous, long enough your heart will grow ears. My heart grew some ears. That day, my twin told my story. They said recoveries in the first 164 pages the book. I had no money. They gave me a book. I went home. What did I do day one? Because I’m going to get an A and a a, I read the first 164 pages day one, well, I skimmed it.
29:33 Why? So I could go back on day two, when they started talking about, hey, recovery is in the first 164 I could go I read them. I got that, I read that. I know what you’re talking about. I had no freaking clue. But I want to have to ask for help, because, you know, there’s sticking needles in your eyes, and then there’s asking for help. Don’t want to ask for. Help. Don’t want to do that, see, because when you grew up, the way I grew up, asking for help was just it was sort of like asking to get beaten with a fuse on it. I asked for help, the fuse gets lit, and at some point after that request for help, I’m going to get punished for having asked that was that was what I knew about asking for help. Okay, so I don’t want to ask for help. I don’t trust any of you people, but somehow I did. I trusted what you told me was real. And so what happens is that man, Paul, said he would be my sponsor. And he said ground rule, because we were in the same business, he goes, I’ll give a rat’s ass. I loved that term. That was a very Texas term. I don’t give a rat’s ass about your music career because, but if you want help staying sober, I will help you. I took that to heart, you know, I I actually work with that man. Now, we have stuff that goes in films and we do stuff like that, but it did not happen because I asked him freaking 25 years into recover, he finally asked me if I would work with him. Why? Because he made the rules going in, he said we’re here for sobriety, until he changed that condition. That was fine with me. I’m not here. I’m not here to network nobody. I’m here to help the alcoholic who still suffers. And when I say, help the alcoholic who still suffers, you may be a newcomer, or you may have four I sponsor a guy with 44 years. We did inventory yesterday, he’s 10 years silver longer than me, but he hadn’t worked much in the way of steps. So I get to be useful to him. So the alcoholic who still suffers doesn’t have anything to do with a sobriety date. In my mind, it has to be the alcoholic who still suffers, and at any given time that might be me, which leads me into my journey of recovery. And you got to tell me, I don’t want to. You know, no soul saved after the end of the speaker time. You know, you ever noticed how if the speaker’s supposed to end at a certain time? If they go, like, two minutes over, everybody’s like, looking at their watch, I gotta go, man, like, I got stuck. Now we last call was a different story, wasn’t it? Come on, man, just one more. But the speaker goes over 90 seconds and it’s like, hell.
32:33 I don’t want to be that guy, so, so I want to talk about my journey in recovery, because that’s, man, that’s the deal. And and I learned there’s a, yeah, I’m full. It’s, it’s the disease that comes with, you know, what I do for a living, I tend to distill things down into little phrases. It’s how, kind of how I remember things. One of the phrases that I learned, I didn’t create, was the fellowship is fantastic as a place to come learn about how to work the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, learn what recovery is, hear people’s stories, identify, relate, realize that we are the same community. But what they taught me early on was that meetings will give you relief. It’s the steps that will give you recovery.
33:28 And I found that to be true, because if I’m just going to meetings, I feel great in the meeting, and maybe good for a few hours afterwards, and then my alcoholic brain gets busy, and if I don’t work the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I mean, live in them, because it says it’s a design for living. And I have taken that to heart. I’ve seen, I’ve worked with plenty of people in recovery over the years who where the steps are this, they’re this great set of tools sitting over on a shelf, and when life starts to fall apart, they go pick it up. And that’s a great design for like, fixing your life when it feels broken. But I have never found that sentence in the book. What I found is a design for living. And so if I’m going to live it, I need to be picking that stuff up, like daily, which is what I do. Okay, so what happened is they said steps to recovery, and then I’m two years sober, and I’m sitting in a meeting that log cabin. This guy gets up and he sounds just like where I’m from, Texas. He’s got that drawl. He’s talking all about his recovery, his recovery Texas, you can take any one syllable word and make it three syllable you he’s talking about his recovery, and he says, If you want what we have, and you are willing to go to any lengths to get it. And then he stopped, and he looked at the room and he said, What do we have? And everybody was like, PA. Quiz. And then he read the 12th step, having had he goes, for all you English majors, that’s past tense. Means it’s happened having had a spiritual awakening as and then he really hit on this word. He goes, V does not say. A says as the result of these steps, he goes, now don’t get me wrong, you’re going to get tons of results from staying sober, but this is the result that makes all those other results possible. And he goes, here’s why that’s important. If you stick around here long enough, and your life gets good enough, you’ll forget about the result, and you’ll be so focused on a result that you might leave. And I have seen this over and over in my time in sobriety, I’ve seen people with 20 plus years go, I’m going to drink. Why? Well, I’m just not getting what I’m supposed to get out of Alcoholics Anonymous. I’ve literally heard those words, and I’m like, What did you expect? 20 years you have had a spiritual awakening sufficient that you did not have to drink one day at a time.
What did Alcoholics Anonymous guarantee you that I missed because if I get the result of these steps, everything else is possible. And that’s why the word the result is so important to me. The result, if I want the result, have to do the work. So he says, now that we know what we have, we’re all like, Yeah. He goes, if you believe sobriety is one day at a time, okay? And now he goes, You believe, right? We’re like, little a sheep at this we’re like, yes to lies, man, yeah, one day at a time. He goes, well, then my challenge to everybody in this room. And he goes, I don’t care how you do it. I don’t care if you call it 1011, 12. I don’t care it’s not for me to debate with you do the steps like you learn to do them, but do all 12 steps every day. Because if you’re willing to go to any lengths, and you believe sobriety is one day at a time, and you want the result, and it’s a design for living, not a design for fixing your ass when it’s falling off. Though it works for that. Work the steps, live them. Don’t just work them. And that’s important for me, because if it’s a task I’ve got to do, like paint the house, the paint may be peeling by the time I get to it, but if I’m living it, if I have incorporated what you teach me about Alcoholics Anonymous in a way that I actually just live it as part of I wake up and I’m like, you know, I’m in it. Then it’s, it becomes the way I respond to the conditions of life, okay? And I will respond to the conditions of being human, alive on the planet. I’m pretty I know it’s an old fashioned term. I’m pretty binary about this, but I tend to either go disease response or recovered response. I don’t tend to occupy the middle ground I like, I don’t know, let me debate it. If I’m not in my recovery, I tend to just react in disease. I have to stay this accountable, responsible. I heard I have to do that. I have to do that for your sake as much as for mine. You don’t want to be around a disease version me. So I began the journey. I talked to that guy. He gave me some he gave me some things to think about, about how to work, all 12 steps every day. And that was about two years sober. And so for the past 31 and a half years, I have a little routine I do and I get up every morning. I did it this morning. I get up, eyes open. I go stolen alcoholic that didn’t change overnight, still powerless over that drug or that drink. If I take it and I throw a few more things in there, I’m also powerless over people, places and things right pre and this is critical, the part that comes after the dash in the first step for me, if I can be powerless, that should overall I want, but if I think I can manage it, we’re dead in the water right there. Okay, if I, if I do not know that I can’t manage it, I’m going to play God. I’m going to do it. I’m not going to worry about a power greater than myself that can restore me to sanity, because I got to figure it out. So first step, absolutely believe I got a power greater than myself. And I say the third step prayer. And then every morning, I kind of run through I run through that. Inventory the way it’s I don’t get out a piece of pad and paper and draw columns and do all that stuff, but I ask myself all those questions. I get up in the morning go, got any resemblance? Got any fears? I do the inventory on page 69 which I teach my sponsees while it’s called the sex inventory, and everybody giggles like fifth graders because it’s on page 69 Okay, see.
40:31 I teach my sponsors, those are questions to apply to any relationship. Have I unjustifiably aroused suspicion, jealousy, right? Have I been inconsiderate? I remember when that one hit me. I was being pretty good about not on justifying suspicion and jealous, you know, justifiably or unjustifiably arousing that stuff, but inconsiderate? Wow, that snuck up on me. Had to learn about that one. So I go through that, and I have a good idea before I’m really into my day, what character defects got up 30 minutes ahead of me? And then what I do is I say that I do six and seven. I’m willing, man, I say that seven step prayer. And the reason I’m going through this real quick is because this is all part of my 11 step, which is where I’m headed.
41:20 Okay, and then on my eighth step, I go, Well, you mean now this is friggin 630 this morning. If I if my higher power has relieved me of those defects of character, then how am I going to respond differently today than I would if I was going to live in those defects of character. How am I going to respond if I’m willing to abandon my favorite defect of character, which is self reliance? Remember, needles in the eyes, ask for help, tough choice, self reliance.
42:00 Right? So I go my amends list becomes who I want to be today in recovery West 2.0 for the day. Now I go into my day. I’m in a living, breathing ninth step, man, I am being the amended Wes and invariably, somewhere along the day, I quit being the amended West, at which point I admit that to myself as promptly as I can, and I correct that. That’s my 10th step. I call it the Pay Attention Step, by the way, the 10th step, pay attention.
42:42 11. 11th step, which I’m getting near the end of my my little talk here, I’ve been in so many meetings where the topic was God’s will, what’s God’s will? What’s God’s will? Outside of the smartest answer, which is, it’s what happens? Do?
43:04 There’s that one. What’s God’s will for us?
43:10 You’re not going to believe this, but maybe you will. I found it in the steps. Here’s where I found it. I went back and I looked at that third step, that third step prayer says, relieve me of the bondage of self, which, for me is just a fabulous, like, really, sort of non specific definition of alcoholism. You could swap bondage of self and alcoholism out from me. What do you got Wes? If I don’t want to go, my name is Wes. I’m an alcoholic. I can say my name is Wes. I suffer from bondage itself. Kind of vague, but it’s a good description. But what do I say in that prayer? I asked, I asked that higher power that I cannot understand or explain. And know this for a fact, if you ever catch me explaining God to you, I am wrong, because if I can explain it, it’s not God.
44:11 But here’s what I can tell you, while I cannot explain God, and greater philosophical minds than mine have written 10s of 1000s of pages trying to prove it one way or the other. Here’s what I can tell you, I see evidence of God everywhere. All I got to do is look at this room, everybody in this room, every sober soul, or every soul that’s sitting in this room that isn’t sober and wants to be and is in this room is evidence of God. Evidence is good enough for me, even if I can’t explain the source or the nature of where it came from. So I say, take away that, all that bondage itself, so that I may bear witness which. This means being an example, right? That you did that. I say that in the third step, and then after I’ve looked specific, now banned by the time. I work with my sponsors all the time on this, I go fourth step. Don’t be so freaked out. It’s like this. You go to the doctor, you say, Doc, I’m sick. Doc, goes, Great, I’m a doctor. You came to the right place. That’s kind of what you’re doing when you go in your third step, you’re going, God, I got bondage itself. God, being the ultimate healer, at least, that seems to be an attribute.
45:31 Says, Great, I’m God. Good. You came here with this. Okay, but could you be a little more specific? Because just like the doctor who doesn’t want to be working on your left knee if it’s your right elbow that’s hurting, my higher power does a much better job when I get and that’s all the four step is, man, it’s just a little specifics about bondage to self, and when I sit down with another alcoholic to talk about it, I’m just telling somebody who’s already lived this story in advance of me, yes, my right elbow. And they go, Yeah, my right elbow acts up all the time too.
46:16 We don’t have to make it so dramatic. I know we do, but the first time to work the steps, the first time you do it is just to learn how. After that it’s so you can just keep doing it. Okay.
46:31 I mean, if I was a person who did an inventory once every eight years, I would already be gone. I have to stay in this maybe I’m just that sick. All right, so when I get to that seventh step in the morning, when I say that seven step prayer, and I’m asking my higher power to take away that self reliance and take away these defects that my morning little inventory go, yeah, Wes your alcoholic brain got up an hour ahead of you, and it’s been making a list. Okay? What does that prayer says? It says, Take this away. You know, you get all of me. Good or bad, take this away. And I don’t know what’s good or bad. The worst thing that ever happened to me, I thought was fuck. I’m an alcoholic, pardon my language. Best thing that ever happened to me,
47:21 I’m an alcoholic, so what do I know about good or bad sometimes? Right? I need to show up be of love and service. The good and bad will sort itself out that gets me through crazy days that we live in. I got to show up be of love and service. You know, kindness is a currency, and I can print all of my own I want. So I’m sitting here with this 11th step, wondering what God’s will for me is. And I look at that third step where I’m going to be an example, and I look at that seven step prayer that says, I will be of maximum service to this higher power in my fellows, and when it comes to the 11th step, there is no more mystery. For me, it’s like the great trick question of Alcoholics Anonymous. For me, it’s really simply this, the 11th step God’s will for this alcoholic is to do what I said I would. And what did I say? I said I would be an example of what you guys taught me and gave me to live by, and I would also be of maximum service to my fellows, even the ones I disagree with, right and to this power greater than myself that I can’t explain. So here’s what I have found, and I’m coming to the end, what I have found is that if I do God’s will for me, which is simply to do what I’ve said, not once, but twice, by the time I’m to the 11th step, I get everything I need to do it. If I need a job, somehow a job shows up.
48:56 If I need to meet somebody, whether it’s somebody to help or somebody’s going to help me. They show up in my life. I get everything I need by doing God’s will. And God’s will is for me to do what I said I was going to do. And I think that’s why they call it faith. I have faith that that works, and I have almost 34 years of experience that that works. And by the way, I forgot to say this right at the start. I normally always say this at the start. But if you got sober before I did, thank you, because without you, I didn’t have this place to come. I am here on the shoulders, on the lives and on the experienced strength of hope of 1000s, if not millions of other alcoholics whose stories I will never hear, but without whom, Alcoholics Anonymous doesn’t survive long enough for me to be Humpty Dumpty man. That old Humpty Dumpty thing fell off. You fell off the wall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put Humpty together again. You. Yeah, Humpty needed to come to AA. Aa could have put Humpty back together, because aa put this Humpty back together, and nothing else was putting me back together. So if I do what I said I was going to do, and in return, get this life. My life has become I’ve traveled the world in Alcoholics Anonymous. I don’t say that to go will look in me. Now, the reason I say it is because I got to do that. Because I said Yes, I said yes, even when I wanted to say
50:33 No, I said yes, yes, I’ll help. Yeah, I’ll do that. Sure. Forget I don’t need to be paid. I’ll get what I need in an appropriate way if I do God’s will. God’s will is do what you said in three and seven West and it’s all going to be alright, never fails. Which brings me to how I’d like to wind up tonight, and I was about a year and a half sober. I was sitting in, was sitting with some drunks, sober ones, and we started talking about prayer.
51:17 And I said, you know, I don’t think I really know how to pray. I don’t know how to pray, not really don’t know how. I was raised in Southern Protestant religion, you know, we had things like ice water Baptists, right? I was more from the beer, whiskey and Margarita Methodist. I i But I didn’t know how to I knew how to make, you know, little Santa Claus, wish lists for God, but I didn’t know how to pray. And I was sitting around talking to these alcoholics and some of these people. There’s, there’s a guy in the room here tonight that looks a lot like this guy was talking to and they said, we’ll teach you how to pray.
52:15 I said, Okay, come over to my house. So I went over to this guy’s house, went into his backyard, had this thing built in backyard, heating up a big old pile of rocks, asked me about my heritage, laughed at me when I told him, he goes highly questionable, he said, but we’re going to teach you how to pray. So these people, honestly, people who they wanted to stand on the story of history in this country, had no reason to help me.
52:58 Taught me how to pray, and for the next eight years of my life when I wasn’t in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, I was in the backyard of these people teaching me how to pray.
53:10 And then they said, We want you to come with us. And I went up to this land long way away from here, and they said, We want you to do this ceremony with us called a sun dance, and we’ll have you dance with us.
53:26 And is one of the greatest privileges of my life that I was given the gift of doing that. And then they said, Now, all those people that you hang out with in those meetings when they want to know to pray and they don’t know how to pray, you teach them like we taught you. You teach them exactly. You don’t get to make nothing up just because you think it’s a good idea. So I did that, and I have done that for 33 years, and it changed my life. And they taught me a beautiful blessing. And this blessing, which to me is the heart of sobriety, is what I want to close with. Want to close with this blessing. Okay? So they taught me. They said, Come over here. We’re going to explain this slow so you get it. They said, You got your you got your emotions. They’re right here, all right. Think of it like a wheel, like a circle. And here in this part of the circle, we got your emotions, but right across from those emotions, we got your mind right, and that mind, it balances those feelings right in the middle point that’s balanced, okay? And over here in the circle, we got your body, right, that thing you Damn near killed, and then over here in the circle, we got your spirit, okay?
54:53 And here’s what we want you to know, young man, because I was a young man in those days, not so much. Now you. They said, right in the center of that wheel, perfectly balanced between your feelings and your intellect, all those thoughts, busy, busy thoughts you got, and between that body you’re living in and that spirit, that spirit that saved you, that you found an Alcoholics Anonymous right in the center of that wheel. We call that walking in beauty. That’s what we call that, when you’re balanced, when I am emotionally distraught and I do inventory,
55:37 I’m going from that part where I’m stuck in how I feel, and I’m moving up towards that part where my mind is, and when I can find that middle point I’m right at the right spot, and when I’m so obsessed about my life and what I need. And by the way, another magic trick for you. This one’s mine, like so dry day. I’ll share this with you, because we talked about it earlier. Here’s another magic sentence. This is what Alcoholics Anonymous taught me. It’s not what is in it for me, that’s not alcoholics anonymous, it’s what’s in it from me, that simple, if you’re stuck in what’s in it for me, it’s what’s in it from fixes, everything.
56:23 So here’s the prayer. I want to leave you with this blessing. So to walk in beauty. That beauty is that balanced place. When I’m in that balanced place, I am in the most sober place I can be, the most useful place I can be.
56:37 I’m in that what’s in it from me place. So I close with this, and I want to thank you for your time. I want to thank you for asking me. I want to honor your convention and all the decades of work that have gone into it. It’s just beautiful. So as we leave here tonight, we’re going to all leave here. We’re going to go back, get on those roads, go where we’re going to go. This is my blessing that I was taught that I give to you as we leave this sacred and holy place, because that’s what this is. It’s a sacred and holy place. May that beauty, may it walk before you. May that beauty may well I can’t get through this without crying. May that beauty, may it walk right beside you, may that beauty, may it walk above you, and may that beauty, may it walk below you when you touch each other. May you always touch with that beauty, and may you always leave that beauty in your trail. Thanks for letting me.