SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi everyone, I'm Walton. I'm an alcoholic. Grateful to be here. Um I like your I'm the nicest asshole t-shirt. I like that. I drove over here tonight with an asshole, and I was the only one in the car. I can relate to that. Um, you know, some I I don't somebody asked me before the meeting how many how how many times I've been over here. We were having a nice talk when I was in the restroom trying to tie my tie, which, you know, that was an adventure. And I needed to pray and get again get out of myself. And and when I came out, the gentleman was still standing there. And he goes, Walt, you've been over here for a long time. But, you know, how long you've been sober? And I said, Well, for since August of 20th, 1990. He goes, Do you still get nervous doing this kind of thing? I said, Why? Why would you ask? He goes, Well, after you left, I saw you go in another door and you came out of the women's restroom. So maybe you're a little bit might be something going on there. You know, and I get up here, I like to have fun because we're not a glum lot. And uh if I if I came here and I was restless, irritable, and discontent on a regular basis, most of every day, um I wouldn't have wanted to stay. I saw people with a light on in their eyes when I came here. Now, I was I wasn't happy that people were laughing because there was nothing to laugh about. I thought, what is wrong with these people? This is the last place I ever wanted to come. Um we were talking on the way in, Kathy and Chad made me in the parking lot because I've been here so many times, but my dyslexia, and I really have it, kicks in and I get turned around and I always get lost in the bottom of the basement down here. I don't know why how I could. You can only go right, but that's another, I don't know. But they walked me in and we were talking about um getting my big book fixed because I put it, but I did put a fresh coat of uh tape on it today to keep it together because I don't want to lose it, and I'm gonna get it get it worked on, I think, and I'm really excited about getting a bound over again and getting it keeping my original pages. I don't want to lose it. It was a $10,000 big book that I got in treatment because I wasn't coming here, so I was gonna go my terminal uniqueness was at a high level in the fall of 1990. I was a dry drunk and I decided, well, I'm just gonna go to treatment because I need some special therapy and attention. You know, it's it can't be. I know I drink too much and my wife's ready to leave me, and I drive drunk all the time, but you know, it's got to be something else. It can't be the fact that uh that I suffer from alcoholism. So I went there and thank God for those places. It was the uh it was in right there close to Noblesville. I moved my family all the way back from southern Indiana where I was coaching and um went three nights a week. And I was talking to Chad on the way in. I wanted to go to outpatient as soon as I was done. I want to see the therapist every Monday night, pay her 25 bucks the rest of my life on Monday nights so nobody would know, and then go to the Sunday morning breakfast meeting where nobody would see me. And that's part of that terminal uniqueness. What I know what I know today is what's freeing is nobody gives a shit what I'm doing. They don't care. Where how did you any of you know where AA meetings were before you came here? I mean, I wouldn't. I didn't drive by churches when people were standing outside. Of course, I've probably been thinking about myself, which is my favorite thing to do. Page 62 in the big book. I'm on there 13 times. Self-selfishness, self-centeredness. That still hasn't gone away. I get a daily reprieve on that too. I don't know if you're like me, I just I could take the smallest subject or something that I'm doing and still flip it into to make it about me and just wear myself out. But if I'm doing service work like that, gentlemen, that seems to help. Um, you know what it was like, what happened, what it's like today. I've heard very tough situations, physical uh uh abuse, sexual abuse people grow up with, no fathers, alcohol in their families, just everybody's drunk all the time, and and um I didn't have any of that. I I've been in coaching for a long time. One of my favorite terms. I can't I was supposed to wear a tie tonight, which I did. Didn't tie it very well. I got I got this on. Can't use my favorite word, just fits everything, my favorite word. You can play you can use it as an adjective, and you can do all kinds of things with it. But you know, uh my dad was really successful. We have tons of money. Moved up here from my he played in Miami, Florida. He was from Elwood and got a full rides basketball scholarship in the 50s. Went down there and played for Bruce Hale, Coral Gables. And so I'm born down there and lived there until I'm about seven. And then this god-awful thing, worse than ever coming here. We moved to Noblesville, Indiana. What a culture change. I was a very depressed first grader. But I'm telling you, uh the Noblesville AA, if and I've moved and I've lived a lot of different places since I left it to go to college in Moorhead, Minnesota, Moorhead State, where Dave Shellhouse recruited me to play basketball, um, where I found the nectar of the gods, which was alcohol, because I wasn't going to touch it before that. We would growing up have the I was raised Catholic, and so I'm a recovering Catholic. And we would have my dad had a big quart of uh on the basement steps, a big quart of whiskey. And they'd get that funny water out when the nuns and priests would come over to they'd play cards and have a good time, and everybody's personality is completely changed. Dad had Paps Blue Ribbon in the fridge, and I remember him giving me some taste of that stuff. And I thought, that tastes like cheap dip. That's awful. It did nothing for me. And he would have it, he'd make the greatest sandwiches in the world for all of his kids. I had three beautiful sisters growing up, and he would make us these big sandwiches and he'd have a he'd have a paps blue ribbon, but he'd stop. So there was nothing. Now, my mom, anytime alcohols talked about, she would just shut kind of shut down, get kind of rigid and not want to talk about it. Well, I had a my alcoholic grandfather out in out in New Jersey that left my uncle and her in Lambertville, New Jersey, and my grandmother, and uh started womanizing when he came back from World War II. He was a medic, good looking dude. He was a big dude, played semi-pro football. And when I saw him on a spring break trip at 16 or 17, he was shriveled up, maybe weighed 120 pounds, had breathing tubes up his nose, and was smoking, drinking on his porch. Beat red. And he died of alcoholism over a bar in Lamberville, New Jersey. So when I got drunk that first time in Moorhead State, found this beautiful girl that I don't know, invited me to, wanted to meet me, and she'd seen me, I guess, during the basketball season. I don't know who she was. But she smoked and drank beer and played pool, long blonde hair, cussed a lot of the wow, she's a perfect woman. So if you go across this, you go across the uh you go across the river, Moorhead to Fargo, North Dakota, goes from 21-year-old drinking to 18. It's a lot like Ann Arbor, Michigan. Have you ever been to that town? Bar every three feet. And I I remember only having two or three that night. Because you I didn't want to ever, you know, I had learning disabilities in high school, and if anybody wanted to come at me, they'd make fun of me because of that. And nobody knew what dyslexia was in the late 70s. But that's how you could come at me. And it hurt. A lot of it hurt. You know. Of course they were sitting in the stands watching me on Friday nights, but I I clung to basketball, baseball, and football because it's anything that gave me confidence. Um it's where I got my self-esteem. Bless you. But the next place I got my self-esteem was that night in Fargo, North Dakota, and it and the other girl that was with us, her boyfriend played football for North Dakota State. We're drinking these, oh back then it made me 15 cent drafts out of the classes around the pool table. And I took it and it got here right away. First my first sponsor, Mike Smith, always talked about the first eight seconds. I didn't really like the taste. I like being with her, and when it got here, ooh, and I walked around that night after I left her dorm early in the morning, and I thought, my dad had an engineering degree. We're basically millionaires. My mom's the greatest mom in the world. We lived in candy-ass Noblesville with a brand new home, and I played three sports. I had no problems. I got a basketball scholarship. Wasn't going great because I was kind of hitting the real world, you know, playing against 22-year-old men that didn't really care that I got a scholarship. And I was a long way from home. But when I drank that stuff, ooh. And I walked around at night drunk thinking, I'm gonna be just like that, I'm gonna be just like that grandfather I met a couple years ago. I'm gonna be just like him, and this stuff's gonna get me through life. Why did I why would I think I needed something to get me through life? Nothing was going tough for me. I thought, ooh, okay. And I store that information up here. Didn't really stick, you know, didn't start drinking a lot at that point. Um came back here and played at Anderson University one year. And then women and alcohol became my that was that was so much more fun. I wasn't always successful with the women, but trying was fun, and I loved the effect of alcohol. I spent a year on Ball State's campus in 80 and 81, and I did not was not going to school here. Girls freshman dorm, pretty much. It's probably the longest relay. I didn't have really any long relationships at all. I'd hang with you a couple weeks, ladies, and then you know I didn't want you to find out what I was really like, and then exit stage left. Who's that? You know, and I stuck. This young lady um took speed and liked to drink. She was beautiful. And I thought whenever a roommate wasn't there, I was over there being her roommate. And and uh it was kind of a sick year, it was kind of sick, a lot of fun, but I got way behind. Going to class is important when you're enrolled with college. Let me just throw that out there for you. Anybody that wants to go back to school? I had like a 2-6 or something, which is C plus B minus when I'm more at state, because coaches are on here all the time. They're paying for your education, they're why, and that's not very impressive, I understand. Um I I had a master's degree I got uh, and I did much better when I was paying for the classes in my 50s and 40s. Uh somehow at Anderson University, I had like a hundred credits after four years, and I'm still a sophomore. I had an 0.6 or 7 GPA one semester and open and opened my grades, and I couldn't believe the way they were treating me. How do you of course they didn't take half my finals, but I thought they were just gonna see an alcoholic brain like mine, I just thought you were gonna hand me something that I didn't deserve. I just I don't know why. I was living in fantasy land. When I drank, I broke broke out spots. IU, Fiji House, Ball State, Purdue. I was never anywhere I should have been. I was looking for non-reality. My best friend growing up was the president of the Fiji House. That was his fault. It wasn't my fault. He wouldn't have been down there to being so successful. Get in that situation. So if I walked in there and they knew I was his best friend, those pleads or whatever they were called, plebes, had to service me. Get me, hand me a beer right away. They couldn't, if they if they if I got pissed off at one of them, he found out. Did have a lot of fun. Here's the problem. Everybody that was my age was doing all the same stupid crap. But after they got, they were done in four years. I thought, what are they doing? Well, you're supposed to be done in four years. That's the ideal wall. You know? And I was far from wanting anything to do with any of that. I went a fifty, I went to mom and I said, Look, and I was getting some coaching opportunities. I had my high school coach save me. He saved me. He started giving me some coaching opportunities in the Noblesville system. And I he found out and I found out I could do this. I had some ability, maybe. And I thought, this is great. I can live off $2,500 a year. This is going to be wonderful. I don't need to go to school. Then I met Lisa after a year at Anderson, and my mom said, You gotta you can't transfer yet. Nobody, there's nothing to transfer. You need to go to class. Actually, and you know what's remarkable, everybody? If you go to class and do your homework, things just get better. And I'm not the greatest test taker, but I could flow, I could stay above water. You know, I could I could. Um so my last class at Anderson University, I go in and and I'm just trying to find something easy. That was always that was my middle name. Now, if I if if I was good at something, I would work really hard, like athletics or something I loved. But when real life hit, if I had to work at it, you know, if I slide you some money under the table, would you do some of my homework for me? You know, that's what I was like, always looking for or finding somebody that I can date that thought smarter than me, which is everybody I dated. And I go into this sociology class, and everybody, it's a marital interaction course. I just saw sociology and I thought easy. And there was only one person that didn't have a partner. My current wife now, 43 years. The professor had had me for a couple other classes, and he went up to her after I came in late that day, had a tendency to be late, and he said, stay away from him. Now she's a good church of God, born and raised, beautiful lady that doesn't like to be told what to do. So as soon as she heard that, my percentages went way up. And I knew she, I'd seen her before, the times I was on campus, and she had a her boyfriend had left to go home to Atlanta. And I heard her talking about it during the breaks and stuff, and I thought, Fourth of July's coming up, she needs a friend. Thought, man, I'll ask her platonically to go to this family cookout. And uh and she said yes. And then we got ice cream. One day I went and picked her up from work, and it never felt like with her, I had to work at. I mean, we were just comfortable from the start. It was it was the most amazing feeling in the world. Now she I took her to what she thought was really cool. I took her to Catholic uh church to play bingo, and there was a kager there. She just thought that was amazing. And a church. I said, Yeah, we do this, Catholics, we do this stuff all the time. As soon as you get out of class, let's have uh uh mass every day, get a bloody marry as soon as you can. They were probably handing them out outside the church. So she was we had fun, we had fun for a while, and then she was beautiful and she worked, so I didn't the word work was not in my vocabulary, so I thought I I need to stay keep a hold of her, you know. I don't and but she had the audacity to ask me one day, because I coached one year why we were dating. Well, we didn't date long, we were engaged after six months. No plan. And I borrowed money from my buddy that was the Fiji House president because he was loaded, got her a ring and got her a little cat and gave it to her, a little kitty, and gave it to her for Christmas Eve, and she said yes. And the she found out her boyfriend had been cheating on her the whole time he was at Anderson, and so that helped my situation a lot. So, but she knew I loved her and I was I wanted to do the right thing, so if I don't meet her, I would have never made it through school because she gave me a purpose. And I wasn't drinking every day, and that's the amazing thing about alcoholism, you don't have to drink every day. But it says in We Agnostics, when I got here, this is one of the things that because I when I was at Fairbanks, they had like a hundred questions, and I lied on half of them, and I don't know. But when I got him to Alcoholics Honest, my sponsor goes, because I love my conception of everything in this head. I love it. Anything I come up with is just brilliant. Then I have to check with somebody else and they go, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Somebody that I trust in this program. But he said, Well, I'll go read this first paragraph, we agnostics. And that's and I'm in, I have to qualify myself. And it just said, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely. I was one for one. Because I always start, I always stopped, but I couldn't stay stopped. It was this disease was he was talking to me when I wasn't doing it. Or when drinking, you have little control. Here was the magic one, too, over the amount you take in, you're probably alcoholic. Two for two. This is written in the 30s, and I wasn't born till 1960 and didn't come here until 1990. And there I was right there. Doctor's opinion, he had me read that. I saw myself in that. And that's what I had my new guys that I work with read. There's nothing I can tell them. Because if they're not convinced in their heart that they're an alcoholic, and Mike taught me this is a spiritual disease, a thinking disease, and you basically have to put the steps of this program in your life to get the spiritual spirituality out of it. It's not gonna come by you like I wanted to do. I wanted to do step one and 12. Just okay, I'm I'm an alcoholic, and I want to go help a bunch of people. I would have killed, I would have killed all kinds of people. So she looked at me back, rolling back a little bit, and said, they had audacity, are you thinking about getting out of college, Walt? Is that ever gonna after she's working hard all the time, she thinks you're thinking about graduating? So that motivated me. I got out, I took, I think I earned 90. You know how we alcoholics are obsessive. Once I got on a roll, took classes in the summer, and I earned like 70 credits in two and a half years. We go down to Indian Creek down in southern Indiana, it's right off uh as you're going to Brown County, beautiful area. And uh I coach and teach down there for four years, and we lived in Franklin. So my favorite place to write up 135 after practice, because I've had a tough day teaching elementary physical education and then coaching basketball, which I loved. So I'd always get my Colt 45 big court of it right there. And um it was a little bar right there, not a bar, but a little liquor store right there on the at the light. If you turn left, you went to Mooresville, if you turn right, right into Franklin. And then after seven miles, that's all I was gonna have. That's that really was my intention that night to not do any more than just drink that cool. And I love cold 45 because it got there quick. See remember I couldn't handle more than two or three. Now my now my my dependency is what I can drink is more. Okay, the disease is is is really at a high level. And by the time I got to Franklin, I'm getting some Miller Draft. Six or twelve of those, because we're gonna just put six down here, and then we had two little babies at home, and I drive around the block over by the boys school, boys' club on Franklin Street, and look in and see her working with Joseph and Allison, me and the great mom that she is, why I'm trying to down three or four. So when I walk in, she's only gonna think I got a couple. Um got stopped a couple times in the late 80s.08, which is legally drunk. I should have been in prison. It was my favorite place to isolate. And that's smart as a coach and an educator to drive around drunk. But I really didn't want to drink socially. I really didn't. I didn't like people most of the time. And uh what was just Both times I didn't have any more, I always had more. My next my goal as a drink, an alcoholic was more. I walked the line, I got, you know. But here's the problem. After Allison was born in 1989, we lost our first daughter, Megan, in 1985, stillborn. I went up to the last second. I held her, I was in there the whole time. Looked as beautiful as Joseph and Allison when he was born. Her umbilical cord got her. But she had all kinds of, she had a horseshoe-shaped kidney and heart issues, which after my situation, I've learned that we've got some heredity issues in our family with cardiovascular things. And I would have loved for her to live and fight for her. And it went right up to the last second. And she was kicking all the way to the last second. But I was there. I didn't take off and run. I stayed in there with the doctor. Said she, if you want to have children normally, I wanted a C-section. He goes, No. If you care about her, we're going to do this naturally. And I just stayed in there, and it was something I'm grateful for today that I did. But Joseph and Allison, we go to specialists, they're both fine. And but when Allison was born, now think about that. Joseph was a celebration. 1989, Allison was born. I thought, and I love her more than anything in the world, and my granddaughter Lily, that, you know. And I thought, this is gonna get in my way. I don't, I don't like this. It's like, oh man, two kids now? And it was only one more year. Now my anniversary, wedding anniversary is also August 20th, 1990. So I got turned down for the head coaching job at Indian Creek because of my emotional. I did a lot of great things, but getting thrown out of JV games as a head coach and kicking the band equipment, they remember that stuff. See, I had rage issues. I don't know if anybody in here. I'm either calm and loving or I'm in rage. Wall has no middle ground. Emotional disease, spiritual deficiency. It actually, if I would have gotten that job, probably would have been, I'd probably be dead. There's numerous things that probably should have been dead over, but that would have been one of them because I would everything would have been great. But I drank all that summer up to that point of August 20th, 1990. I was supposed to be home at 6 o'clock because we're going out to dinner, right? And I'm just gonna go play golf, bad golf with my buddies in Noblesville and cheat and stuff and have fun. And uh I got home at three in the morning. She overshot my time a little bit. Just a little, you know. Fell in the door. I knew I was in trouble. I had bought her a gift, though. I thought that was nice. And fell in the door on my knees and crying like a baby because I was a candy ass, because I knew I was in trouble. That's a coaching term, by the way. And you can donkeys are named asses, so it's really not cussing. Right? Okay, that's rationalization again. There it is. And she you she had the audacity. I woke up the next morning and she had an appointment at Fairbanks in Greenwood for me. I wasn't that. I just said I needed help that night. I didn't want to go talk to anybody. But she goes, I don't know how much longer I can do this. I thought, oh, I get that. I was surprised she was still with me at that time. I was inconsistent. You can never depend on me. Sins of omission were at a high level. I was never there for people when it mattered. I was there if it made me look good. Um if I put that stuff in my system as much as I love my wife and my kids, my granddaughter, as soon as it goes in me, and that I I don't care. Don't care. So I go in that day and I talk to the gentleman and I actually told the truth because lying was one of my favorite hobbies too. You know how you can tell an alcoholic's lying, don't you? An actor when lips are moving, right? So, but I told him the truth. He said, You're in the early stages of alcoholism. I said, That's great. I can drink maybe some white wine or drink socially. That's beautiful. Just teach me how to drink. So I, you know, he goes, No, it doesn't matter if you're in a late, early stage. What are you gonna do about it? And I I didn't have Lisa with me that day. So I went home, started thinking about geographical changes, and I did make one. And I was thinking about killing myself too, because I just couldn't stand living in my own skin anymore. I was a dry drunk for nine days. Started exercising more, started moving, you know. I was all the things that you hear about helping, the endorphins would help some, but like anybody, if the wind changes directions, you walk by me, I wanted to punch you right in the mouth. I could not stand anybody, and especially me. So 46 days later, we had moved up to Noblesville. She's so really smart, she gets jobs like that. So she gets a job up there. I'm drinking coffee like it's water, and I and I decide I can drive from Noblesville to Indian Creek every day, because back then the interstates weren't as bad as they are now. It takes you, it takes you an hour to get from Noblesville to Castleton now. But so that was cool, and I knew she would be all right if I did something to myself. This was the game plan. And my family was all there. And she goes, Are you gonna see somebody else again? So she makes another appointment at Fairbanks in Castleton. And then I made the big, big mistake of actually saving my life. I took her with me. So when that counselor goes, You're in the early stages of alcoholism, sir. What are you gonna do about it? She goes, Yeah, what are you gonna do? Her personality is pretty strong. She's very loving and caring, but she will let you know how she feels. I couldn't have been in any other situation. That's the type of person I have to live with. I don't want to guess what you're thinking. I'm not good with that. So it was cool because you know, is this a two-hour lead? Because I'm I'm trying to look at okay. I'm gonna be done. I'm gonna cut the part about myself out totally out. So we're gonna be done 7:30, I promise. That was supposed to be funny, and it wasn't. Scratch that from the yeah. So the fun, the fun part was the AA people were coming in on family night, and your family would come in, and Bob Bob Nephu's past, and his wife Ann, the greatest, sweetest lady in the world, was an album, and I loved what they were saying. And he said, take your day, and my wheel, the big wheels just turn, and I'm about six weeks down the road and six weeks behind, thinking about guilt, remorse, all the things that were going on in my life. He said, Take your day and put it in a gold box and stay in it. This guy's a genius. Then I talked to him after. He goes, I go to Alcoholics Anonymous. I said, Whoa, whoa, whoa, I just want to graduate from this thing and be better. And he told me where a meeting was. Well, I get out, and you know what they did for graduation for our presence after you graduated from there? Go to AA. I paid you all this money, I really didn't. The insurance did. I paid you all this money, and that's what you're coming up with? Save my life. Then I did what I already told you. I go Sunday morning, I asked God to be my temporary sponsor like you, sir. Thank you for your service, too. And I had no intention of calling. Nicest guy. Hey, I got a spongy. If you're calling him, no. He's busy. I don't want to bother. And I wanted to see that lady, that young lady, because she was pretty nice looking. I want to see her on Monday nights. I'm just being honest. She could help me through all my problems. What a sick person. So I go Christmas Eve. I am a dry drunk. I stop August 20th. Now it's Christmas Eve. We have this big dinner that all these people came to for years, and it was an alcohol fest. There was mom hit all the alcohol. There was no alcohol because of Walt. I felt bad for everybody else that was there. I really did. And uh the same people, nobody was having a fun. So and I was helping mom with uh the dishes, and I we looked out of the window, and this is a turning point too. My mom saved my life so many times. She was an incredible woman. Raped by priest as a young girl, and became an alcoholic, tried to kill herself in 1981, and I found her, knocked her bedroom door down, and had terrible migraines. And she turned all that about, she turns out all around after getting out of community hospital in 1982, went back to school and worked for Prevail for battered women and children for 27 years. And I thought, when I was at my lowest, my dad got caught for fraud in 1982. Remember how well I told you we were doing? He was way ahead of his time in his thinking, kind of like you. And I mean as a compliment, he was really smart, and he just looked down 37, and all it was was cornfields, and he's tried to put a holiday in and bowling alley's tennis facility, and he had it right that they were about ready to start it, and the bank said, whoa. So dad signed a bunch of things fraudulently to get the equipment that he needed, and he was gonna do it anyway. My dad's in a Hall of Fame at the University of Miami, um, Miami, Florida. Great player. All those things that made him engineering degree in four years. Really? I couldn't get through algebra one. Really? But he didn't like one thing, be told what to do. And rules never applied to him. Now you're telling him he can't do something? Well, he's in he should have had 15, 16 years. We're sitting in a courtroom in Noblesville, and the and the judge, and I'm drinking a lot, 21, and he tells I should put you in prison for 20 years. But this family that you have, you're gonna be on probation for 15, and you're gonna go into Hamlin County. He didn't call it Hamlin County Hilton, but that's what we call it. And he he was like uh he'd work every day. Of course, he never thought he would do anything wrong, a little bit of a narcissist. Grabbed his pillow, walked all the way down Cumberland Road, checked himself in the jail, walked back, got a shower, and went back to work, and made more money later on and just flipped it all around. So I have those two examples when I was at my lowest. Like, you're gonna give up, Walt? Really? Is that what you're gonna do? And I didn't I I fought back. But now they're telling me I have to ask for help, and that is not one of my favorite things to do. I have a defiance on me, and if I don't care about the topic, tell me if anybody can relate to this. If I don't care about the topic, I'm goofy and silly and love to have fun with people. But if you're telling if I care about what we're talking about and you're telling me what to do, I'm thinking about what you should do to yourself, and it's not pretty. And that almost killed me. We we talk about in coaching, I've never told a player in 45 years, started at coaching at 21, never told a player in 45 years I thought this is a competitor. But when I gave up and quit, and alcohol, I knew I'm getting alcohol off my schedule. It is with my ass. I won. It's the only time I've ever given up and won. You I'm not playing you anymore. And and it's and mom told me, boy, honey, there's a meeting, outstretched hand group, at the basement across from Kentucky Fried Chicken, and I got there 15 minutes late, walked down that basement. People were smoking. Mike Smith, my God rest his soul, had a pipe. He was chairing. Sister Ruth came to that meeting a lot from my Anderson over here, from Anderson, what a saint she was. And I and and uh couldn't see from the chair table to the wall because there was so much smoke. And I stood in the back and hid by the kitchen, and then when he started doing the prayer, I now the problem was the next week there was three or four of them that caught me. They knew they knew what I was doing. Then I went up to Faye, who, great lady, still alive, goes to Al-Anon. I made a mistake again because I liked what Mike was saying, and he was cool, you know, and he was articulate and he looked happy, and I wasn't. I said, Faye, do you think Mike would be my sponsor? She said, I mean, I don't know. Go walk your ass over there and ask him. See, I still wanted people to do things for me. He sent me to Tough Love. Said, I this is what I do. I go to these three meetings. Outstretched hand group, which is a speaker, two literature meetings. I gotta be able to see you. Here's my phone number. Call me every day. I didn't want to do any of that, but you know what? With only thing that really ever changed Walt and for the better is pain. Pain has always changed me. But it's gotta be a high level. I could take a lot. I could take a lot. But my back's to the wall. Now alcohol was I I can't, I thought I'm not gonna be, I'm gonna be able to get through life. Remember that part? Now it's killing me. And I but I can't live without it. That's that's a problem. But we alcoholics, and it says in our literature, we'll go to the gates of hell and insanity trying to decide, am I gonna get help or am I gonna just die of alcoholic death? Let me think about that for a while. That's what see I have a personality too that that's not gonna happen to me. It's for weak people. I know strength today is giving up, acknowledging a fault, and turning your life around and trying to help others. That's a strength. I don't care who knows I'm an alcoholic today, as long as I do, right? Mike Mayley got me into the steps. He said, We got two weeks and we're gonna do this fifth step thing. Here's your form. We're gonna meet at my house. And I said, Well, that's way too that's way too quick. He goes, if you don't want to do it, you don't have to do it. I'll refund your misery in six months if it doesn't work. Let's try that. I thought he's a smart ass. But every time he did that to me, he was like, it's like a coach, my some of my favorite coaches are, I'll show you. And then they walked, they had a hook in my mouth and walked me right where they wanted to. And we did the fifth step in January of 91 at his house, got on my knees for the first time ever with another man and did the third step prayer. That's where I really worked the third step. That's all that is. Bill C always talks about you can do the first three steps in 37 seconds. Am I an alcoholic or not? Is there some kind of God? Don't have to figure it out. I still, after 36 years, have yet to understand what I'm talking to every day. I do know that since I've been doing it, my life's a much better. I think it's too powerful for me to ever figure out. She, it, him, he, it, I don't know. Religion is man-made, spirituality is God given. And I drove home that night on 32 from Westfield to Noblesville, and I thought Jesus was gonna stop my car and shake my hand. Man, way to go, man. But I'm telling you, for the first time since about 15, 16 years old, and a lot of the stuff was on my fist step was stuff before I ever drank. In high school, the way I treated girls, the way I did just things that were just not good. Stealing things. Um, and I, you know, and this tons of pain just lifted out of me. I can't explain it. Then I see him at Tough Love, and he's got a piece of paper. One thinking, he goes, we need to meet about the I'm thinking he I was the best fifth step he's ever heard. And he wrote down some notes. He's gonna tell everybody how great I did. It's not what it was. He had down what my ninth step was gonna be, and I thought, well, what about this one and this one and this one? He goes, We're not to hurt anybody else again. But that would be fun to go visit her. Okay, here's the problem with that. She doesn't remember you, which is highly disappointing. She doesn't care, and her husband has a gun. So let's not do that, we're not gonna do that.

SPEAKER_00 39:13

So did you put it that way?

SPEAKER_01 39:16

We'll leave her alone. Some of the coolest, I I I've had I had some negative responses, but I'm cleaning my side of the street. If I if it's it's worthy to do, to get all this crap out of me, so that spirit of the universe to me could connect, because I think that it's in here somewhere. This is doesn't say this out in the book. I'm just telling you how I kind of cultivated the whole thing in my mind. I gotta do this. And then the one thing I thought I'd never tell another person, he told me some things that night that freed and my terminal uniqueness went right out the door. Then I heard other men and I didn't hear women talk about it because you don't, I don't, you know, never do a fist step with a woman, but I I heard it in groups and tough love circles, and uh I'm not a bad person. I'm a sick. I'm not morally corrupt, I just you know, we're all human. Our loser says there's no nobody walking around on his face earth that's not sick in some manner or fashion. Taking people's inventory, I I don't do it anymore. I try to love people and care about them. Now, I have some off days, and I could tell right away when I need to go get on my knees again or call somebody because I start taking somebody's inventory. Because see, if I can push you down lower and make fun of you or hurt you, that rises me up as a sick person. Um anything, Matt, you know, as long as I wasn't drunk early, I could do about anything, and that was gonna be okay. And now that that road is really narrow. I'm still not far, I'm far from perfect. Uh, and you know why I stayed? Because I didn't have to be. But I want to do better now. Step 10 is really big. I unfortunately I thought I could, you know, I could talk about Chad behind his back and tell him, tell him my buddies, man, his wife's a lot better looking than him. I don't know how he got her. And then later I'll just say, hey, you know, you know what I said, uh. Huh? After a while, I was like, you know, you need to stop. That's disrespectful. And I couldn't say I was sorry anymore. This is really hard, this has really hurt my feelings. I had to say, hey, you know what, Chad, that's wrong. And then not do it again. Because I was saying I was sorry forever. This didn't mean anything because I just go around, go right back and do it again. 11. You know, what's really cool is I learn from what you're doing. If I come to meetings and listen to you and how you're improving your connection with God, I go, you know what? I don't really want to get on my knees, but you look a lot happier than I do. Now I puke and for what I' puke in front about anybody, bombing all over the place. But I might get on my knees and act like I'm praying. How embarrassing. I was doing it when my kids were growing up. I'd just do it. If I need to do it, I do it. I go try to go find someplace private. But Marco Garcia came out of the Pendleton Reformatory, grew up in Los Angeles, and did things that were just, I can't even think about doing. Said, man, you need to get on your knees and humble yourself before the guy that got you sober. And I waited until a certain amount of pain before I started doing it. I didn't do it. I think it was the first year or two before I started doing that. See, I'm not gonna do it right away, but then if I watch you're doing, see, I can see I used to get drunk with my buddies and we'd talk about God and close this little bar down we were in, and we had all the answers. I wanted God to come visit me. If you just come visit me, God and talk to me, I'll turn my life around. How selfish and crazy is that? But that's what I would come up with. 12, there's three parts. Um practice these principles on all my pharaohs is still what I do the worst. See if Wall doesn't get caught doing something, then it's not wrong. Right? Just come on, I haven't done this in a while. I can look at this stuff that shouldn't be looking at. But then I want to do it again. Man, I start doing it too much. And then that connection with God goes away. My higher power. Because I whatever I'm doing, that's what I'm doing. Whatever I'm thinking, Walt's gonna do it too much. Addictive personality. Giving back to coming here tonight. Finding ways to give back. I do I do fairly well. I've done it enough to still be here. Um you know, I and I'll read one one thing to close, and hopefully you'll you've heard, you'll hear on this little segment that I read something on some of the things I talked about tonight. But this is the best thing. Remember, I came in, I was embarrassed to be here. You gotta be kidding. Today I know this is that other than marrying my wife and meeting her, this is the best thing that's ever happened to me. Um in closing, like I had a uh terrible health scare. Died on the operating table four years ago, had an aortic dissection, which you don't live from. You don't live from. And I now go do talks for the American Heart Association. By the by the way, I did one for August 6th, and this shirt fit fit a lot better that night. I don't know what the heck was. I had to check again tonight and thought, am I put the wrong black shirt on? This thing's a little tighter than it was a month and a half ago. But I go, I learned it here. I go talk about for seven or eight minutes a doctor spoke, a surgeon, and then I did. I barely made it through freshman biology in high school. But I know all the terms now because I get it's this has got my attention. 10,000 men a year in this country died drop dead from this. Uh, it's a birth defect. So I lived through it. Uh, they lose me at the end a couple times because my hemi arc blew out, also. And they found that they they thought they had my ascending aorta all fixed. Um tricuspid valve is man-made, was invented a year before this happened to me. Pig's valve didn't wasn't gonna work because my ascending aorta was so shredded. So that's the year before. So I go help the American Heart Association now because of this thing that's in me. And I, this guy, 38 years old down the hall, had the surgery the same time I did. Heart hospital in Carmel. He died and he had two little kids. And I felt I had terrible guilt. Met with a minister and he said, you know what you should do? He already knew he's a team. I coach at Carmel the last eight years. I was in North Central for 20, but he's our team chaplain kind of, and I said, What do I do with this? Survival guilt's killing me. Just killing me. I've gotten to do all this stuff, and he didn't get to. He said, Take everything where you give back in your life to your players through being advocate for these people that saved your life through Alcoholics Anonymous and take it up two or three notches, and that's what I've done. Just try to that okay, I got the plan now. It's black and white. Um I didn't deserve anything to be here still. You know, but I know I must either God goes, I'm not dealing with that asshole yet. Excuse my French, or I couldn't give back, and that's what I'm supposed to be doing. Maybe that's what he there's more to be done. And I changed some things in my prayers that I wasn't doing before. And he said, clean up something that you're doing, and nobody knows you're doing. I go, okay. I got something. And by the way, the way women, this is an issue with women too. They don't have the numbers that the men have. And that's not why we're here, but it's not just a man thing. Our book is made to be suggestive only. We realize we know only a little. God will disclose more to you and to us. Ask him in your morning or her, in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick. The answers will come if your own house is in order, but obviously you cannot transmit something you haven't got. C2, your relationship with him or her is right. Great events will come to pass for you and countless others. This is a great fact for us. Abandon yourself to God as you understand God, admit your faults to him and to your fellows. Clear away the records of your past, four and five, give freely of what you find, and join us. We shall be with you in the fellowship of the Spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the road of happy destiny. Trudge means walk with purpose. May God bless you and keep you to then. I'm Walt, and I'm an alcoholic. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 48:37

Thank you.