vol 50. Sobriety Date 2/22/1971 (Seamus)

Seamus shares his Experience, Strength and Hope after having just celebrated 50 years of sobriety. Seamus brings perspective, humility and wisdom to this share. Once an ordained Catholic Priest with a Doctorate in Canon Law, he is now a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Addiction Recovery Specialist, and Life Coach.

Raised in Northern Ireland in a home with lots of emotion, anger and tension (though no alcoholism), he was constantly gripped with anxiety, and eventually depression. He spent decades of his life pleasing other people, doing what came next, avoiding all decision making. Seamus never felt normal, though it wasn’t until his first drink, two years into being a priest, that he realized as much.

Seamus gives a beautiful testimony of what the program of Alcoholics Anonymous can do for a flailing life. He brings a tone of gentleness that makes the listener want to hear more. Sobriety didn’t stick the first time he was up to bat, however the rooms, and the people, and the program, wrapped around Seamus and “grew him back.”

Quotes
“It’s only a beverage and it’s killing me.”

“I attempted suicide, that was my way out; I saw no point in going on with life. [After waking] I had a moment of clarity . . . I’m afraid I’m gonna have to live. I decided that if I was gonna live, I was going to have to be sober."

“You have to set aside your present understandings, and you have to tolerate the anxiety of not knowing long enough to come to experience and understand in a different way."

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SPEAKER_01 0:01

We believe that alcoholism is a disease and that Alcoholics Anonymous is one solution to that disease. I'm here to bring you the voices of its members. Everyone that comes on the show, including myself, is an active member and has found recovery in the rooms of AA. As you listen, please take what works for you and leave the rest.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Seamus O'Connor and I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is 22, 1971, and I just had my 50th anniversary, for which I am enormously grateful. As you can probably tell, I don't come from right around California. I was born in the north of Ireland and uh to a family where neither of my parents was alcoholic. However, uh it was the kind of family where you woke up in the morning as a child and your antenna went up to read the emotional temperature of the room of the house because there was a lot of tension always in that house with anger and criticism and uh that kind of thing. So uh I grew up knowing exactly what everybody else was feeling and what they wanted of me. Uh I didn't have a clue what I wanted. So when someone would say, What do you want to do after school? I would say, I don't know, and I would look at my mother. Uh and uh my mother wanted me to be a doctor, so I was going to be a doctor. Uh, until an uncle of mine who was a doctor said, I don't think you'd make a very good doctor. So uh he said, uh, you're too squeamish, and I don't believe you have a passion for healing sick people. And uh he gained that impression for uh having spent some time with me. And uh so I decided that I would go to seminary, and I don't know how I arrived at that decision, except that I knew it would sort of please my mother, it would be hard for her to fight that being an Irish mother, and uh it was going to take about seven years, and a seminary is a place where they train priests, so I would do a degree in philosophy, and then I'd do four years of what they called divinity, which was theology and all that kind of thing. So uh at 17, you think of seven years ahead as an eternity, and I think my attitude was something will come up, something's got to come up, and I can always uh change. But then another characteristic of mine came into play, and that was that I could never make decisions. And I remember later in sobriety, my sponsor had to deal with that because I would always keep saying, Well, I don't have to decide that today. I'm living one day at a time. And he would say to me, That's not living one day at a time, that's procrastinating one day at a time. Uh, living one day at a time means you decide things today that need to be decided today. So I went into seminary, and for seven years I didn't make a decision, and I just did my studies, and I was never any, I never had any problem with them. And I always kept coming back in September until one June day in 1960, I was ordained a Catholic priest, and uh I was ordained for the Diocese of Sacramento, which I had signed up for about six years before one winter night, and it sounded like a good idea to go to California. Uh in Irish winter, California just seems like heaven. So uh now they were expecting me in California. So I arrived in Sacramento and uh everything went fine. It was uh kind of exciting and novel and everything for a while, but um, you know, then something happened, and uh the way I could explain it is this you know, it seemed like I sleepwalked through my life making no decisions, and I wound up having life sort of happened to me, uh being almost a victim of life. And uh one night I was at a meeting in San Francisco, and this woman uh told uh the story. She said, I was in the Isle of Kmart in Baly City, and she said, I woke up and suddenly I realized I had two children. And she said, the last decision I had made was I was a sophomore in high school in Sacramento at McClatchy High School. And I I had my kind of Kmart moment uh when I was about six months in Sacramento. I was walking around from the church to the rectory one day and thinking, what am I doing here? This is me. How did I get here? And why am I here? And and uh it was very confusing. Uh and but my reaction to it was not to make a decision, my reaction was to just work harder one day at a time. And and I did. I did everything. I taught high school, I raised more money, I converted more people, I called on more houses, and you know, it was uh that pastor told me 10 years later, he said you were the hardest working priest I ever had. So uh, but and all of this is before I even started to drink. So I'm telling you this so that you know that my insanity was not caused by alcohol. In fact, uh alcohol was the treatment for my insanity in some ways. So I uh the pastor also noted that I didn't seem to get much sleep. I would go to bed like at two or three in the morning and be up at six and work really, I worked really hard. And he said, you might want to try before you go to sleep. Try having a little whiskey. There's a bottle under the sink in the kitchen, old granddad 100 proof. And uh he said, people sometimes think that helps them sleep. So so a few nights later I tried about, you know, two ounces of old granddad 100 proof. And I've got to tell you, that was like uh burned into my memory. Uh nothing had ever worked worked so well as two ounces of old granddad 100 proof. It did more for me than prayer, ordination, or anything else ever had done. It was like, where had this been all my life? And I had no idea until it went away how much tension and anxiety and stress I had been carrying all those years, and suddenly two ounces of whiskey, and I felt normal. And I remember even saying to myself that night, this is what normal feels like. I have never felt normal. And uh so uh that was when I was about two years a priest, and uh two years later, I was up to about a fifth a day of old granddad 100 proof. I wasn't having hangovers, I wasn't drinking when I was working, but uh I really treated myself when I was done. And uh I drank great quantities of it. And my friends, uh the priest buddies that I played golf with on my day off, they were worried about me. They told me afterwards, they said, We we thought you were going to kill yourself. And uh so at that point, around about then, the bishop called me uh called and said he wanted to see me in the office. So I went in, and of course, my friends thought I was going to get pulled off about my drinking. And the bishop said, I'm worried about you. You're working so hard. And he said, You're gonna have to slow down a bit. And then he said, Would you be interested in going for a five-year course for a doctorate in canon law? And it was like, Well, of course I would. I'd love to do that, anything to get out of Sacramento. So I said yes, and uh I took off for Washington, DC. And I got into, was in graduate school, I also became a graduate alcoholic. Uh after a couple of years there, actually about three years there, I started having really bad effects from the alcohol. I had never had bad effects from it before, but I was starting to get really, really depressed when I'd be drinking for two or three weeks. And uh then I'd have to go in the wagon and then would clear up, and then I would drink again, and then I'd get depressed again. And uh and when I was drinking, I started drinking recklessly. Uh, I got pulled in for drunk driving three times one day, and uh never got a ticket, of course. Uh, this was being the 1960s. If you were a clergyman, uh unless you hit the patrol car, you didn't get a ticket, I think, in those days. Uh some Irish cop would probably give you a lecture when he's if he caught you and tell you what a disgrace you were or something. But uh aside from that, you know, uh you just then got back in your car and drove away again. So uh, but uh it was getting so bad that in the summer of 1968, and the the actually in spring, uh I finished up my exams uh in May, and uh I went on a binge. And in the I I was so depressed, I called the only alcoholic priest I knew in Sacramento. He was an AA and everybody knew it, and they kind of looked down on him a bit because he was an AA. He was an alcoholic, you know, the rest of us are not, uh, even though they probably all ought to have been an AA, a lot of them. And uh so he I told him about a friend of mine that was drinking too much, and I was worried about him because he seemed to be getting depressed. And and uh this man, Father Joe, uh said, How much are you drinking, Seamus? And I uh I he he had you know it was on to me, and so I admit it. And he said, Well, when are you coming home? And I told him I was driving across the country and I would be getting into Sacramento on such and such a day. And he said, Well, that day, don't drink anything that day, and I'll meet you. And he gave me a place to meet outside a meeting up in North Sacramento and a place called Creekside on Auburn Boulevard. And uh so I met him there and uh right on time, I hadn't been drinking, and we talked for a few minutes, and he said, Well, let's get into the meeting, it's just been started, and uh I caught him as we're going in the door, got him by the arm, and I said, Joe, I want to be really clear, I am not joining tonight. And he looked at me very seriously, and he said, I get it. Don't sign anything tonight, just listen. So those are the conditions under which I came into Alcoholics Anonymous the first time, was that I wouldn't sign anything, I would just listen. And uh I mean, I know a lot of people, their first AM meeting, they feel uh right at home. I didn't feel at home, but I was really fascinated by it. Because here was all these people talking about their drinking, talking about sobriety and being spiritual and talking about God and higher power and using four-letter words all the time, it seemed like. Maybe these classes are for the slow ones. Once I found out, you know, in graduate school, you find out there's a book, you can study it in your room. You don't have to go to the stupid professor's classes, you know, and uh you know it's going to be on for the exam. So I thought I could maybe do the home study. So I read the stories in the big book, and I probably didn't get uh you know a fraction of what was in there. And uh, but at the end of the week, I called Father Joe again and I said, you know, this AA isn't working. Like I hadn't really tried it. And uh he said, he never argued with me, and he said, Well, he said, yeah, sometimes people need something different. And so we agreed to meet on Monday, and he would take me down to this place in Sonoma, uh in the Valley of the Moon. It was called Mountain Vista Farm. And uh, we arrived there, and this great big bear of a man called Truman, who had founded the place, uh, met us outside. And Truman looked at me, and then he looked at Joe, who me knew well. And he looked at Joe and he said, You know, Joe, I think we have a problem here. I think this is an intellectual. And somehow he was ignoring me and he was talking to Joe about me like I'm invisible or something. So I was getting annoyed at him, and and I said, Well, what do you mean by that? I knew it wasn't a compliment. And he said, Well, intellectuals, he said, that's my name for somebody who's educated beyond their capacity. And he said, you know, priests and ministers, he said, are the hardest people to get sober. He said they're worse than lawyers. He said, because they think they know things and they never will be able to resist any new ideas coming from people who have learned from experience. He said they're they're they're they're they're intellectual snobs and they they just can't let a new idea in. And I poo-pooed that, you know, and said, I'm in graduate school, of course, you know, I I am learning all the time. He said, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll see. So I went in my room. And anyway, uh, so I I'll come back to that because I stayed there 30 days and and it was uh, you know, I got a lot out of it actually. Uh, but I didn't say so. I stayed sober for like a number of months and went back to graduate school, got really busy, didn't go to AA meetings, relapse, then went, you know, then after the relapse, uh, and I was in the detox in Washington, DC, the public detox, and um then I went to some meetings, and then I forgot again, and I, you know, my insanity kept coming back. And so uh and then in 1970, I finished my doctorate and I came back to Sacramento, and I'm getting a promotion, and everything is great, you would think, except that I saw there was no more five-year graduate school ahead. Uh, this was my life now, sitting in that office, too done from the bishop, you know, processing uh administrative stuff for the diocese, and and I got so depressed. Uh and that uh I think it was the New Year's Day afterwards, after that, uh, I relapsed again, and I had a terrible month of January, got into my depression, and uh uh I uh attempted suicide. I took the vacuum hose from the uh parish rectory and put it in the back, you know, the tailpipe of my car and in the back window and all that, and took all the pills and alcohol I could find and went to sleep on the front seat with the car running. And you know, that was uh that was my way out. I I I I saw no point in going on with my life. And uh and I woke up about four o'clock in the morning, the car had apparently stalled at some point, and I get out of the car and you know, open the garage door and wander out into the playing field behind the school at St. Anne's Rectory in Sacramento, and that is the beginning of my period of this period of sobriety 50 years ago. I'm sitting at four o'clock in the morning in the grass, uh, my back against the rail, listening to the frogs, and my head is full of uh misery and alcohol, carbon monoxide, and everything else. And but I had a moment of clarity, I suppose you could call it, where I just realized that I'm gonna have to live. I I'm afraid I'm gonna have to live. And I decided that if I was going to live, I was going to have to be sober and I would do anything I needed to do to be sober. So I called the guy who ran Sacramento Recovery House, which was you'll call it probably today a low-bottom kind of drunk place. Uh, people from the street came into Sacramento Recovery House and was run by this guy, Walter McCusker is his name, who's long since dead. And Walter uh was had been a hitman for the mob. And he had on his card Walter from Philadelphia. I solved problems. And apparently that was his card when he was also in his previous profession. He solved problems and he had done two stretches in San Quentin, and his final stretch was in Folsom, and that's where he got sober. So he had about 15 years of sobriety running Sacramento Recovery House. He was a scary dude. I tell you, that guy uh, you know, scared everybody. And uh, you know, when Walter got annoyed at you, you felt, you know, oh my god, your sinuses cleared, you know. And uh so uh I uh went in there and he said, You can come in if you do what I tell you. And uh uh he had no respect for the clergy whatsoever. He'd been raised Catholic, and uh I think he he probably had seen too many priests who killed themselves with alcohol. And he said, You do what I tell you, you can come in here. So I went in there and I stayed, I did what he told me, and um I afterwards you know, I got out of there and I had my commitment uh to go back there every Monday night for a meeting that he would preside over, and uh and it was uh Walter in many ways saved my life because uh then I began to bring, you know, it what Truman had prophesied began to be really clear to me because uh one night at that Monday night meeting, Walter threw out the topic. He said, you know, I want you to discuss the insanity of alcoholism tonight. And all of us are sitting there, and you know, we maybe, maybe it was only me and a few other idiots. Uh we started telling about the wild things we did. And I had just got through telling my wild, insane story. How one night, you know, drinking, I had got my car wedged on the Western Pacific Railway tracks. My Galaxy 500 fit right over the tracks. I thought it was a good place to turn around and uh couldn't get it off, and I had to get a tow truck to lift me off at midnight. And I just got through telling that story, and the next thing, the big heavy wooden kitchen chair bounced off the floor and it startled everybody. And I looked around, and Walter is standing up, and he's red in the face, and he says, Well, somebody speak about the insanity of alcoholism and shut up about how goofy you were when you were drunk. And uh he stomped out of the room, and we all looked at each other. Other and went, what's wrong with Walter? We didn't get it. And uh uh I still didn't get it. Uh two days later, I'm you know, still a priest at the time. By the way, I I haven't been a priest now for like 49 years, but um, but I was a priest and I thought I drove by the recovery house and I went in. Walter is sitting in his armchair and he looks up at me and I said, How are you today, Walter? And he said, You stupid son of a bitch, you still don't know what we're talking about. And I said, What do you mean? He said, You've no idea what AA is about. And I said, I beg your pardon. And he said, Well, what's the insanity of alcoholism? I said, It means that after that first drink, I cannot predict what I'm gonna do. And he said, he just shook his head. He says, You still keep your big book in your car? I said, Yeah, I carry it around. I had one of these big books that had like about three or four different colors of underlining in it. And uh he said, Bring that thing in. So I brought it in. He says, Open it, page 35. What do you got under line 35? And I said, uh no, I got stuff on 34, but nothing on 30. He said, Would you read the first lines of page 35? And I will never forget them. It says, so we shall describe some of the mental states that precede the relapse into drinking, for obviously this is the crux of the problem. He said, Didn't you think the crux of the problem might deserve a little highlight? And I said, I had never seen that, I don't think, before. And he said, That's exactly how denial works. You don't see what your mind doesn't want to let in. And then he took me through, you know, they said they were going to describe some of the mental states, and they do. The guy who sober, you know, puts alcohol in the glass of milk and thinks it won't hurt him in the full stomach. And then later on, there's the one that actually just fit me to a T where everything went fine for this man, it was great, you know, uh, and it was the end of a perfect day, not a cloud on the horizon. And then he, you know, as I crossed the threshold of the dining room, like this, the italics, suddenly the thought crossed my mind. So, and he showed me all of that and took me down to page 43, you know, once more, the alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the workplace. And even then, you know, took me to page 24, the squiggly writing about with few, uh, what is it, uh, for reasons yet obscure, the alcoholic seems to have lost the power of choice in Greg. He read all of that or had me read it, and he's standing there looking at me, and he said, So? I said, so you know, like he said, all I could think of, he told me this later, he said, all I could think of was an old Coke machine uh where you put the quarters into it and nothing happens. Uh, he said, I knew that had gone into your head, but I knew nothing had happened, the coins had not dropped, the can had not rolled out. He said, uh, and I if you'd been a coke machine, he said, I'd hit you with my fist. And he said, but I knew that if you didn't get this, you would die of this illness. He said that to me, you would die of this illness. And he said, I took one more shot at you. And here's what he did. He said, you know, you the way you told me the story of your relapse, you were in St. Anne's Rectory, you had not had anything to drink for seven and a half months. No drugs, no alcohol. That's right. And he said, You got in your car and you drove up Freetwood in Sacramento, two miles to Hollywood Bottle Shop. I'm right, and he said, Was there any alcohol or drugs in you driving up Freeport Boulevard? No, not for seven and a half months. He said, and you bought a bottle and you drove two miles back down again to the rectory. Is there any alcohol or drugs in you driving down? No. And then he put his coffee cup up to his mouth and he put his hand in front of it and he said, Even when the glass is up here, is there any alcohol or drugs in you? I said, no, not for seven and a half months. And I began to kind of suspect what he's saying. And then he took a drink of his coffee, and I had to watch him till that coffee went down his throat. And he said, and we've listened to you bullshitting and telling everybody that you were fine until that chemical got into you. He said, if you don't know you were crazy on the way up Freeport in the liquor store, on the way back down again, and probably for days beforehand. He said, if you don't know you were already insane, he said, you should find a chapter of Morons Anonymous. He said, because there's no intelligent person could hold that you were normal and sane. Uh be uh driving up pre-port in the liquor store and driving back down again. And you know, the coins dropped. I got it. I said, Walter, you're scaring the hell out of me. And he said, if you're not scared by that, you didn't understand what I said. And I said, Do you mean that walking out of here clean and sober for I was three months sober at that time, uh, I might just have a strange mental blank spot because he had pointed that out to me in page 42. And uh that might, I just might get the idea. Suddenly the thought might cross my mind. He said, exactly. He said, that's the insanity of alcoholism. He said, What the hell did you think it was? Uh he said, you you confused that with the phenomenon of craving, which happens after you take the first drink. Uh and and I was, uh so I was really annoyed, so I called Father Joe my sponsor and reported Walter for having scared me. And he said, Thank God somebody got that through. We've all been trying to tell you that for three years, and you wouldn't let it into that thick Irish skull of yours. And uh and I said, but that's that's very scary. What do you do then if you have no power at all? And he said, That's what the that's what AA is about. And he showed me page 45. He said, uh, open your book, and I opened it, and he said, read page 45, the second paragraph. And it was lack of power, that is our dilemma. And and it uh it says uh they uh uh we had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a power greater than ourselves, obviously. But where and how were we to find this power? Well, and then the next paragraph is well, that's exactly what this book is about, it says. And I had no clue. I said, So how how do I get this? My willpower has failed me. I've got it, I have no power, I I can't count on my own willpower. Well, where do I? He said, that's that's what we call the spiritual malady. He said, that's the spiritual illness. That uh and he said, uh you that's what the that's what the steps of AA are for. What did you think it was for? And you know, I remember driving away uh that day, I had gone over to his rectory, and uh uh I drove away, and I remember thinking, you know, I had only the vaguest idea what the spiritual program was even for in AA. I I thought it was sort of like some way of like if you become good and you get rid of your sins and are sorry for them, like, you know, and and God then God who's out there somewhere, you know, beyond the clouds, you know, will actually then see all of that and then will give you something called the gift of sobriety. I and I think I had some kind of second-grade idea that that's how the transaction worked, that a God out there, if he was pleased with me, would give me the gift called sobriety and give me the strength of will where I would not want to drink anymore or something. And it was all the most vague thing in the world. Uh, and Father Joe explained to me, and he showed me that paragraph, you know, that's in uh in the 12 and 12th, and and that was like another big revelation for me. So on page 40 in the 12 and 12, that uh the edition that's uh uh you know, since I think it was in a different page before, but it's like the last uh page of the third step, and it says it is when we begin to use our willpower, uh, when we try to make our will conform with God's that we begin to use it rightly. To all of us, this was a most wonderful revelation. And here again we have italics, squiggly writing. Our whole trouble had been the misuse of willpower. We had tried to bombard our problems with it instead of attempting to bring it into agreement with God's intentions for us. To make this increasingly possible is the purpose of AA's 12 steps. And that for me was like, oh, oh, so that's what I'm trying to do with the 12 steps is to bring my will into harmony with the will of a higher power. And you know, I remembered uh at that time there was this uh when I was in Washington, uh, there was this uh guy I got to know who's an AA, and he was a professor of astrophysics at Georgetown University. And he would sometimes pick me up and take me to meetings, and he would sit with me afterwards, and he had about three or four years, and I had like three or four months, probably at that time again. And uh he said, you know, he said, I found out about AA that it's about, you know, you get power when you're going with a power greater than you, and you don't when you're going against it or ignoring it. And he said, and he gave me an example. And I somehow at the time it didn't ring a bell until after all of this talk about powerlessness and and the spiritual malady and everything. Uh, I remember what he said. He said, uh, it's sort of like if you were a skier and you have a lot of ski, a lot of snow, and you're a good skier, but you're in a cornfield in Iowa. Uh, he said, what you're lacking is a power greater than you called gravity. That's why we have ski resorts where there's gravity, and you put your will into harmony with the will of a power greater than you, in this case, gravity, and then you have power. And he said, and I find he said, I find that AA is more physics than theology or religion. And he said, because it's about I get power when my will is in agreement with the will of a higher power. And uh Father Joe had used a little different example. He said, if you're an apple tree, uh, you know, you should be growing apples, but if you make up your mind that you're going to try to grow cherries, you're not gonna be a very good cherry tree. You'll never be a cherry tree, you'll just be a messed up apple tree. And uh, so it's kind of the same thing that my my mind has to be going, my intentions have to be going in the direction of the power. I can't be like another example be swimming into like a riptide or something, uh rip current. So I I began to kind of get it, what A was about, and and and uh Father Joe had gone over with me what spiritual meant, you know, that it came from the word, which he and I both knew from Latin, you know, it was the word in Latin spirio, S-P-I-R-A-O, which means I breathe. That's what the word spirit comes from. It's the same word that we use in respire, respiration, or you know, anything got to do with uh or expire, the breath goes out of, you know. So uh spirit actually, you know, means that I'm alive. It doesn't mean I'm supernatural, it means I'm I'm a living, breathing part of nature, not a part from nature, but a part of nature. And uh so uh when when I've got a spiritual malady or disorder, it means that my my mind has an agenda that is unrelated to what I am supposed to be doing. And uh and and that was like and suddenly the program all began to make sense, and why I was working the steps made sense. And I know it doesn't have to make sense in order for it to work, but somehow for me to surrender, and and and Father Joe explained, he said, you know, you're you're setting out to be you know to achieve something that you don't understand from where you are when you start out. And he said, so uh it's it's something transformative. And he said, uh, as you walk through the path of steps, uh he said, you will experience transformation, you will be changed. Um and page 25 of the big book, you know, says that we'll we'll be uh nothing less than revolutionize our whole relationship with uh uh toward life and our fellows and God's universe. So it's a transformative thing. And and Father Joe told me, he said, look, you have to set aside your present understandings, and you have to tolerate the anxiety of not knowing long enough to come to experience and understand in a different way. And you don't even, at the beginning, setting out, you don't even have the terms of reference for what it will be like afterwards. And uh he used the example of Henry Ford, and he said they interviewed Henry Ford, the old man, after you know, he's very successful with his Model T and Model A and all. And they said, uh Mr. Ford, how did you get the idea? And he said, I have the idea. He said, if I had asked people what they had wanted, they would have said they wanted faster horses because they didn't have in their minds what an automobile would even be like. So, you know, so when when Father Joe was explaining to me that uh what I want is transformative, and I have no idea what it would be like on the other side of transformation. And uh so that was a kind of you know, open-minded and humility, uh, you know, all in one. Uh I had to be open-minded, I had to be humble, uh, and and realize that I don't know what it would be like on the other side of a transformative experience. Uh, and I had to be willing. So I had HOW, you know, just demonstrated for me almost right away. And uh uh and and that was like uh real important kinds of gradual things. Uh and uh, you know, every time I had to come back to, oh my god, I thought, you know, I thought I knew that. I thought I knew. And it turns out I I was looking for the wrong thing, the wrong higher power, if you like. I I didn't know what it would be like. I was looking in the wrong place for it. I was looking way out there somewhere, the man upstairs or something BS like that, you know, and and I found out that it's inside, as it said, tells us in page 45, 55, and it tells us again in the spiritual experience. It says we tapped an unsuspected inner resource, uh, which we presently identified with our own concept of a power greater than ourselves. So here, you know, it's like all of the stuff I had wrong. Uh I was looking in the wrong place for the wrong thing in the wrong way. Uh and and and here uh it had all been in front of me all along, and I was too pig headed to let it in. Uh, and uh so I remember the first time I was asked to speak at a meeting, and I asked Father Joe, uh, you know, what did I what did I talk about? And he said, why don't you tell them all the ways you screwed up the program? Uh and he said, because you're kind of a smart ass. And he said, you know, you don't want to be talking like you uh are brilliant, because he said, nobody, he said, I've never seen anybody screw up the program worse than you did. He said, nobody with such a closed mind. It never took anybody I ever worked with, you know, as long as it took you. And uh and he said, Truman really had your number right away, didn't he? And this was like many years later, and he we were we're having lunch in Sacramento, and and he he just was laughing. He said, I always remember what Truman said about you, that he you're gonna have trouble uh getting it through your thick Irish skull. And he said, Boy, was he ever right. And uh, but kind of to come back to Truman for a moment before I I end. Uh that day after Father Joe dropped me off at Truman's, uh, I uh I was shown to my room and I thought, oh, this is great. I have a room for myself, I'm gonna sleep here all day and stay away. I did, you know, you don't want to see people when you're in that state. And I thought it was like the bottom of the barrel. Here I am in a drying out joint. We called them fidget farms, fidgety people, you know. And uh uh and uh and I just thought it was the bottom of the barrel for my life. My life is over, and this is terrible, what a disgrace. And you know, and I also was feeling lousy from having been drinking badly the night before, and uh and so uh about 10 minutes after I get into the room, the knock comes to the door, and somebody says, uh lunch is on, Truman says you're to come down to lunch. And I said, uh, I don't feel like he said, Truman says you're to come down to lunch, and he said, I'm waiting for you here. So, you know, I had to like, oh God, you know, and so I I I reluctantly left the room with him, and we walked on. We went into this big dining room, a big uh country farm kitchen, and it had this big table, eight people on each side, and Truman at the top, six, seventeen people, uh, uh, and one vacant spot, and the guy guides me over to that, and I sit down and uh and I won't look at anybody. I'm like a horse with blinders on. I won't look up even, I'm looking down at the placemat, and then the next thing somebody places lunch in front of me, and lunch of all things was soup. Now, I never would eat soup in public because I had the shakes. So I wasn't about to touch that soup, and I let it sit there, and Truman finally looked down and said, Seamus, eat your soup. I said, I don't feel like eat your soup, he said. And I I knew what was going to happen. I picked up the spoon and my hand shook, and I I dropped half of it, spilled half of it before it got to my mouth, and and I put the spoon down kind of in disgust. And uh, and the guy next to me on the right nudged me, and he said the rudest thing anybody had ever said to me. He said, You've got a pretty good shake. And I I just thought that was the rudest thing anybody had ever dared to say to me. I mean, imagine commenting on somebody's shake. It's just not nice. And uh, but then the next thing he said introduced me to the fellowship. And the fellowship turned out to be that which held me for day, you know, uh until I finally got the program. And and uh but he said, mine is almost gone. It was worse than yours. Yesterday, mine was worse than yours. And the guy on the other side of me said, Look at mine, he said, I've been here three days, and you know, and it's still there's still a trace of He said, I still have to watch that soup. And then I so I I dared then to look around and I saw these faces and everybody's smiling. And they're all very friendly and kind looking. And uh uh and and then uh uh the guy on my left nudged me again. He said, Look at that old fart across the table. I look over, there's this old guy, uh, you know, brown as a berry with one yellow tooth, and he's grinning. And the guy says, He's been here a month and he's still putting it in his ear. Look at him. You know, and the old guy really was still shaking and already, he was grinning and spilling his soup and and and never minding. And I think to myself, you know, I suddenly had this overwhelming feeling. I felt like this must be what it's like if you were a Martian and you find a colony of your own people here on earth. A colony of people that, you know, where you it's safe to let your antenna up or whatever Martians have. You don't have to wear a hat and pretend you're from France or something, like we did in Saturday Night Live. You know, you you can actually be who you are. And and then we went out on the porch and we sat around and we talked and laughed. And what did we talk and laugh about? We're bonding about uh the lies we told and how terrible we felt and how depressed we were, and how some of us were just suicidal, and and and how we uh hid liquor and got rid of empties and raided people's medicine cabinets and all of these kinds of things. And and and we were bonding uh uh you know on a level of the most vulnerable possible part of ourselves. And I uh when I was a little kid in Ireland, um, there was a friend of our family uh was a great uh horticulturalist, and he grafted a lot of trees and stuff. And he showed me how to graft one day. I was very curious. Uh he had a number of different varieties of apples all growing on the one tree. And he showed me how, like he cut deep into the bark, and he said, There's a tender layer in there. He said, You have to get to that. And then he said, the branch you want to graft, you have to pare it down to its tender layer. And he said, and then you put that into you cut this little kind of cross and move back the bark, and you put the branch in there, and then you seal it, and then you wrap it very tight so no infections get in. And he said, and pretty soon the life of the tree will actually start running out along that branch. Otherwise, the branch would die. But it will run out along that branch and the branch will start showing life. And I realized that in in the fellowship we bond at that, you know, at that most tender level where we're ashamed and embarrassed is the stuff we're sharing. So if I tell you I'm an alcoholic, you know more about me than my family ever knew about me. How it is, how I feel, what it's like inside to be me. And when you tell me you're an alcoholic, I know more about you uh than your family knows about you. And we we bond at this level, not at the bagadocial level of all the great things we've achieved or what we own or any of that stuff, or who we know. No, we're we're bonding at a level of our vulnerability. And for me, that was like the essence of the fellowship. And even though I wandered at times until I finally got it, uh the fellowship uh drew me back. And it has held me and protected me and saved my life for the last uh, well, actually 50 years completely sober, but since 19, I was in treatment when Robert Kennedy was assassinated that first time in 1968. And uh since that time, this has been the most important relationship in my life, and it has saved my life. And I thank you for asking me to share today.

SPEAKER_01 48:47

First, I want to say happy birthday. 50 years is amazing, and I'm hoping we get to hear a little bit more of your wisdom about what you've seen in the rooms over the years. Um can you talk a bit about how the program has changed from when you first came in and how it is now, and how society perhaps even perceives the program of Alcoholics Anonymous?

SPEAKER_00 49:13

Yeah. Um when I came into the program first in 1968, and you know, finally in 1971, February, when I got sober, this period of sobriety, um, at least where I went to meetings, which was in Sacramento essentially, and San Francisco, and before that in Washington, DC, I can't remember there being so much emphasis on the program. There was a great deal of emphasis on the fellowship and going to a lot of meetings and talking about the benefits of sobriety versus being still drinking and using. And uh, I remember it was quite common to say, well, when it's 51% in favor of being sober, you will get sober. And you know, but I don't remember the emphasis being on the program that is tax anonymous being anything like what it is today. And I think this is a distinct improvement. I I think that uh when uh I was coming up, I the things I remember are people talking about their prosperity now that they were sober, and uh that you know their family was now together, and their uh all of the benefits and health and various things like that, and not being arrested and not being afraid of the police. And so I had, you know, all of these things uh were dominant in the meetings, uh, whereas uh the actual uh steps and the step work as it is in the books of Alcoholics Anonymous uh was not as as much uh emphasized as it is today. And I think today it's great. I think the program has uh at least where I'm going to meetings nowadays in Southern California, uh the program is foremost in people's discussions. So that I think is a real improvement.

SPEAKER_01 51:45

So this 12-step, so as you went through that that's helpful because you're talking about the 12 steps and how they um you were talking about transforming your life.

SPEAKER_00 51:56

And I love the quote that you shared in terms of setting aside your present understandings and um tolerating not knowing long enough to come to experience and understand in a different way. Yeah. And and that that sort of is, I think, the keynote for me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:17

So when you came with this very solid belief system, an ordained Catholic priest, doctorate in canon law, which is really intimidating to me. Apparently, you can take the girl out of the Catholic Church, but you can't take the Catholic out of the girl. Um I'd love to hear about how the program of Alcoholics Anonymous affected your understanding of God and religion, or perhaps, you know, like highlight that part of your journey where you began to really experience transformation, perhaps while you were working the 12 steps, your relationship. Um, did it revolutionalize your relationship, as you mentioned?

SPEAKER_00 52:55

Oh, absolutely. I I think I always had a kind of an academic faith. Uh, I had, you know, studied philosophy in seminary and then studied divinity, which is theology of various kinds, moral theology, dogmatic theology, all of this. And I think it for me it was a sort of an academic uh uh uh I kind of approved of it academically. I don't believe I had a very solid faith uh in uh uh that I, you know, still doubted. I remember uh coming across a book when I was in seminary by Rolf Waldo Emerson, and uh it had a number of his uh it had an essay called Nature, and it talked about how uh walking across the moors in uh this was in the early 1820s, maybe, and uh he disappeared. He said, All I could I find myself a part and particle of God. I I disappeared, my own self-awareness disappeared. And I remember that struck me. And then uh I went and I looked at an address that he gave to the Harvard Divinity School uh back in like 1827 or something, and uh he said he talked about how they were misinterpreting Christianity, and they he said that uh Christianity uh has distorted the message of Jesus, and that was what his contention was, and he's addressing this class of ministers, and uh and it really annoyed Harvard, they didn't invite him back until after the Civil War. So, and he lived down the road from them, and he was the greatest intellectual of his time, and he said Jesus knew who he was, he knew he was the incarnation of God, and he said, uh, God incarnates himself in each one of us and goes forth each day to take possession of his world in us, in other words. Uh, that so uh and I remember that being such a radically different interpretation that it always sort of stuck in the back of my mind, and I wouldn't say it undermined my Catholic faith, but I think it added to my understanding of faith. And then I came to the program and I found out that they were not talking about God up there somewhere, they were talking about, as it says in page 55, I found the great reality deep down within me, and it is only there it may be found. And I realized, oh, that's like the divine spark that some Jewish traditions hold, or Ralph Waldo Emerson, God is incarnate in each one of us, and uh in other words, he takes flesh, uh human form. And then the second appendix, uh, somebody pointed that out to me after I'd been sober for a while, and it was, oh my goodness, you know, it said we tapped an unsuspected inner resource which we identified as our higher power. So, you know, it turned out that maybe I had been looking for the wrong thing in the wrong way, uh, and and looking in the wrong places uh for it. So that was a kind of the evolution of my uh sense of belief uh and faith, if you like. So I I don't know if that you know answers the question. Yeah, yeah, it does.

SPEAKER_01 57:10

I'm gonna take you back uh to when you tried to commit suicide.

SPEAKER_00 57:18

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:19

Now for a Catholic priest to commit or attempt suicide, that for anybody that's not aware, uh correct me if I'm wrong, the belief is that you go to hell if you commit suicide. Is that still the case? That's what we were told as kids.

SPEAKER_00 57:35

That's a Catholic teaching about that. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 57:39

So my you must have been extremely desperate having believed that you would be going to hell, but you committed this act anyway.

SPEAKER_00 57:49

Um it I think in the depth of depression, I think all hope vanishes and it it is despair. And I believe that uh it is despair. Uh I believe it's uh uh a psychological illness. And uh I don't believe that people who commit suicide go to hell. I believe that people who commit suicide, the vast majority of them, are uh have uh a sense of hopelessness, uh, which I believe uh at a certain level, a sense of hopelessness is a psychological illness. And I don't believe that a person who's suffering from that and that does something desperate uh is is liable for eternal punishment that just doesn't seem to jide with uh you know the loving God. Uh that uh we are even urged uh in uh the big book on page 67, I believe it is, where it says, you know, that even people we have difficulty with, we should have tolerance and patience and and and try to love them uh as sick people. You know, so I I can't imagine that we would expect less from the gods, you know, uh that than uh in less understanding uh of the condition. So uh that's my own personal feeling. And of course, it it doesn't mean that it's the right one, it doesn't mean that anybody else has to hold it, but uh but I believe that in the depth of despair, I don't believe you're really rational. I don't believe you're thinking through like, oh my goodness, I'm going to wake up in hell. You know, I I don't don't think that even occurred to me.

SPEAKER_01 59:54

Well, I'm glad the car stalled.

SPEAKER_00 59:57

Well, I am too. Yeah, that that was uh uh many years later, uh one of the other priests who was in that parish uh called me. Uh he had also left uh uh the ministry and was a professor at a university, and he called me and uh his wife had passed away, and uh uh and he said, uh, I have never told you this, but he said, I put the hose away that morning. Oh yeah, and this is like 40 40 some years later, it was probably about eight or nine years ago he called me, and uh and in that conversation, he told me he called from another state on the other side of the country, and uh but he said, I've never told you this, but he said I put the vacuum hose away that morning. So anyway, uh he's the one who drove me to the recovery house also, and uh lots of angels in your life, Seamus. Yeah, I think so. I think we have a number, I've had a number of them in my life, including my wife, uh, who I think rescued me from uh uh a life of of despair and depression.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:32

I appreciate your your intellect. You have in a good way, in a complimenting way, not in a bad way.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:40

Well the other the other way was enough trouble for me.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:45

What did you go on to do in your life?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:47

Uh I've been a psychotherapist now for 40 47 years.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:53

All right. I mean, what else can you do with all this information and insight that you're bringing, but but help other people.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:00

So it's it it actually is kind of what I you know was seem seemed to be made to do, you know. That's uh I'm much more into that than being a holy man, you know. I I never could see myself as a holy man, you know. I would have been a very I was a very bad one, put it that way. I was trying to grow cherries and I was an apple tree. I could never be a cherry tree.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:31

I have one final question for you. For the alcoholic out there listening now, perhaps still suffering, what message do you have?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:40

I would say, you know, I don't I think it's important that they know that AA does not have an arrogant uh corner on the market or pretend to have uh a corner on the market, because that's very arrogant. But uh what was told to me early on makes sense. And it says uh, you know, you have many things you want to do with your life, and you know that the life you're living is not the life you would probably prefer to be living. You feel, you know, that it wasn't worthy of who I was, the life I was living wasn't worthy of who I really was. And that if I wanted to get on with the things I wanted to do with my life, not to spend them trying to find a new way to quit alcohol. It's just silly. It's only a beverage and it's killing me. Why don't I just take away that everybody has, or millions of people now have fund that works for them, do that and then get on with the things that you really want to be doing with your life. You know, the people who care about you, the people you love, the projects, the ambitions, the dreams. Get on with your dreams.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:58

For more information, read the first 164 pages of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous or visit keepcoming back.net.