# Final talk, Puttin' Sober AA Group — Stories of Recovery MP3

- Archive ID: `DP-2005-DENVER`
- Source: https://storiesofrecovery.org/downloads/BBA/DonPritts-DenverCO~19Mar2005.mp3
- Duration: 00:47:02
- Audio SHA-256: `733f2255e764ef7ebf9b8ae3f80d54e778a9c41ee4a07e7d02cd370accd5cc59`

> Automated timestamped draft (faster-whisper base.en). Names, specialized terms, and unclear passages require human review.

## Transcript

**[00:00:00]** Let's say the serenity prayer, God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
**[00:00:16]** courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Thank you. I give you our good friend, Don Pee.
**[00:00:38]** Never mind. My name is Don and I'm an alcoholic. And I'm a recovered alcoholic. I do not know any of the symptoms of alcoholism.
**[00:01:06]** The main one of course being the physicalologist's alcohol that causes me to one another drinker since I take one.
**[00:01:16]** Well I don't drink so I don't worry about that one.
**[00:01:21]** The man is the mantle of the session that causes me to take that drink where I want to or not. And God has been very kind to me.
**[00:01:30]** I don't see alcohol. It has to be drawn to my attention, which makes me extremely vulnerable.
**[00:01:42]** Maybe if I talk this way or be better, indulge me please. I'm working on part of the problem.
**[00:01:52]** I did not know I was an alcoholic when I got here. I was certified by one government agency as a sociopath type 2.
**[00:02:16]** I'm still not sure what it is, but I can tell you it ain't good.
**[00:02:20]** My federal parole officer said I was a psychopath. The medical people said I was a manic depressive drug addict.
**[00:02:34]** I was hiding my alcoholism behind some real drama man. You can get by it too, maybe even three of them, but not all of them.
**[00:02:44]** My favorite was not a depressive. And please understand, that's a very real condition my son had.
**[00:02:52]** For me, it was the game. I learned real early on that if you want people to stay away from you, throw a mood swinger to you.
**[00:03:07]** It works every time. You have to get really good at it, because if you do it too often, you'll lock your way and try to fix it.
**[00:03:20]** And you've got a whole new game to deal with. If you don't do it well enough, I invite you to parties to the stand up comic.
**[00:03:32]** That's what I'm trying to avoid anyway.
**[00:03:35]** God Jesus is what's at hand always. He will not mess my life up to make yours better. Get over it.
**[00:03:48]** But he is what's at hand and why I came to the end of my road Christmas 9, 1967.
**[00:03:57]** The end of the road was very simple. It's been a week during the most thorough inventory I've ever done in my life.
**[00:04:10]** Many of you was honest. I looked at who I was and realized I had become completely useless.
**[00:04:19]** A great place to be. It doesn't feel good. And if you're in AA so you can feel better, go somewhere else.
**[00:04:36]** Really? But what it did was bring me to that point of total surrender.
**[00:04:51]** As long as I can be useful, I can stay here. When I become useless, I gotta go.
**[00:04:59]** I had two little boys that had been on the road with me. A little emotional part of me.
**[00:05:14]** For four and a half years, they went through the different arrests. They went through everything with me.
**[00:05:25]** And they'd have been better off in a foster home than I knew it.
**[00:05:31]** The upshot was that I took a two month supply of methamphetamine, hydrochloride, good stuff, right out of the drugstore.
**[00:05:47]** And shut up my arm, drank everything in the house and we don't die. What a bitch it was in the morning.
**[00:05:59]** I woke up and what I woke up to was a simple thing. I'm a complete failure at living and a complete failure at dying.
**[00:06:24]** What a bitch. The body won't quit and the mind won't work. And the police are at the door.
**[00:06:32]** Now there's your first clue that I ain't dead.
**[00:06:36]** Well, they don't need them in either of the places I was taught you gonna go.
**[00:06:49]** And I couldn't have verbalized it then, but the attitude was very simple. My being was.
**[00:06:55]** I wanted to go anywhere anyone says. Do anything anyone says, if I don't have to be him anymore.
**[00:07:10]** And I haven't been. I came to a fully awake. No idea what to do with it. Just fully awake.
**[00:07:21]** Now I get most of my lessons from my grandchildren. And I was thinking the other day, my little granddaughter, Gianna.
**[00:07:34]** When the babies are restless, they give them to me. Because I know what to do with babies.
**[00:07:40]** They're laying on your chest and hum. A pretty single sleep. For God's sake, don't yell at them.
**[00:07:52]** Can you imagine that? Trying baby and yell at them to shut them up.
**[00:07:57]** Somebody had a hitch in the head with a stick. But she was, I hung her on to sleep.
**[00:08:08]** And was looking at her and I thought, you know this was, it would be, I can't imagine.
**[00:08:20]** Coming back into the room, waking that baby up and then leaving the room. What a terrible thing.
**[00:08:29]** So, because God uses whatever's at hand. Oh, I'm sorry.
**[00:08:45]** Flaunt me to the moon. They had nine charges on me and the first one called for three years of life in the penitentiary.
**[00:09:00]** I've been in three of them, which doesn't mean anything. Because that's not to deal.
**[00:09:08]** Better? Well, you missed all the good stuff. Sorry.
**[00:09:15]** We plea bargained that one. They took me in a room of my attorney and the federal people.
**[00:09:30]** Because I still owe them five years and they were kind of anxious to have me back.
**[00:09:36]** Instead of having a kid guilty to a reduced charge they had available.
**[00:09:44]** So you got to have an A group two hours from here and a charge available.
**[00:09:50]** That they would give me one and a half to three years sentence.
**[00:09:57]** And the other option was to go back to the feds for five years.
**[00:10:04]** And I'm not stupid. So I took the deal.
**[00:10:13]** Now the federal officer that negotiated this changed his mind at the last minute.
**[00:10:22]** He'd been in touch with the hospital. And on paper I'm untreatable.
**[00:10:31]** Sociopath doesn't know the difference between right and long. How are you going to help them?
**[00:10:36]** They're a psychopath. A sociopath does. They just don't give a damn.
**[00:10:41]** And I'm both. So they said just lock him up so he didn't hurt anybody else.
**[00:10:48]** And so he did the deal for me. I was really worried about my Social Security
**[00:10:57]** because what they did was let me plead to guilty on charge on the only one in the state
**[00:11:05]** that never pled that way. Which I find interesting.
**[00:11:12]** And I thought I was going to Texas where they could fix what was wrong with me.
**[00:11:20]** So in five days I'm supposed to be in federal hospital in forward Texas.
**[00:11:30]** Getting fixed. The federal man at the last minute changed his mind.
**[00:11:37]** Said we can't do anything for this one. Just lock him up.
**[00:11:41]** So I was taking five days later to the fish tank in Colorado State Penitentiary.
**[00:11:47]** Great place. Built in 1894. Made out of rock quarries from the great place.
**[00:11:54]** Fish tank you don't know. That's where they spend four to six weeks
**[00:11:59]** teaching you how to live in this community. Because you don't learn that quick.
**[00:12:04]** You're in trouble. They thump in bumpy and decide we're going to put you to work and all that.
**[00:12:12]** In our third week three convicts came over to talk to us.
**[00:12:21]** I knew they were convicts because they had green clothes with numbers on them.
**[00:12:26]** Ugly. Except for Bruce. Bruce is kind of cute. He really was.
**[00:12:36]** But no crusty old bastard named Doc got to put in first. And he said this.
**[00:12:45]** My name is Doc and I am an alcoholic.
**[00:12:48]** And that means that I'm a policy over alcohol and drugs and guards and all of the other circumstances of my life.
**[00:12:56]** And if any of you smart bastards think you can still manage your lives,
**[00:13:00]** look to the award the state just gave you for the nifty job you've been doing.
**[00:13:05]** Well we'll do the argue with you.
**[00:13:08]** You said your very best thinking got you the penitentiary. You're not doing too good are you?
**[00:13:13]** Well no. Then he gave the promise we can show you a new way of thinking.
**[00:13:28]** We can show you how to learn to live a life that will make sense to you.
**[00:13:33]** My life had never made sense to anybody because it's trying to make sense to you.
**[00:13:41]** And one quick look you say I don't make sense.
**[00:13:44]** From the time those little people would come to me and say why did you do that?
**[00:13:52]** And early on I told them the truth not very long but I told them I don't know.
**[00:13:57]** They said well you must know you did it.
**[00:14:01]** They told us a number of things that day.
**[00:14:09]** The main one was they invited us to what they called a 12 step study school.
**[00:14:18]** You were not allowed to attend the A meeting till you completed the step work.
**[00:14:24]** You weren't fit.
**[00:14:26]** They brought real people in from the outside.
**[00:14:30]** And my sole partner and I Jim didn't have a hell of a lot to do anyway.
**[00:14:43]** And Jim was one of those guys that one of the first emotions that returned to me was compassion.
**[00:14:51]** I didn't know what it was but I knew that I knew why I was there.
**[00:14:59]** Jim didn't know.
**[00:15:01]** He had done what you know I've all been terrified of.
**[00:15:04]** In a car drunk in a blackout he killed people.
**[00:15:09]** So what the hell let's go.
**[00:15:14]** I'd been to NA in the federal penitentiary didn't hurt a damn thing because I'm not a drug addict.
**[00:15:23]** I too loved speed.
**[00:15:27]** When treatment came out with that drug of choice that's mine.
**[00:15:32]** The drug I don't have any choice over at all is alcohol.
**[00:15:37]** So I'm very blessed because when I got here the entire focus of the A was recovery from alcoholism.
**[00:15:47]** Which if you think about it brings about sobriety all by itself.
**[00:15:52]** Unfortunately I'm a little concerned about A today.
**[00:15:58]** The focus is shifting to sobriety.
**[00:16:04]** And don't drink.
**[00:16:06]** We're told at the very beginning that's something we can't do.
**[00:16:09]** So I spend any time with techniques and styles and charts and graphs and questionnaires and that help us.
**[00:16:26]** But I was spiritually awake which meant I began to see things spiritually.
**[00:16:33]** One of the mistakes I had made most of my life is that I thought
**[00:16:37]** I was a human being trying to have a spiritual experience.
**[00:16:41]** And I had lots of them.
**[00:16:45]** I'm a spiritual being.
**[00:16:47]** Having a human experience.
**[00:16:50]** And what is that for you?
**[00:16:52]** Bring it on.
**[00:16:54]** I'm not gonna outlive it anyway.
**[00:16:57]** So bring it on.
**[00:17:02]** But I was the three guys that were working with it.
**[00:17:05]** There were three of them.
**[00:17:08]** Bruce and Phil and Roy.
**[00:17:10]** Completely different personalities.
**[00:17:14]** But the message was identical.
**[00:17:17]** Bruce was doing a naturalized sentence for a double murder he'd committed in a shootout downtown Denver.
**[00:17:30]** The man telling me the story could not do that.
**[00:17:36]** And I could see that.
**[00:17:38]** And I asked him about it.
**[00:17:40]** I've been taught to ask questions.
**[00:17:42]** He said, that's right.
**[00:17:44]** I've been changed.
**[00:17:46]** God changed me.
**[00:17:48]** And the only reason I stayed in the AA was to be changed.
**[00:17:51]** I didn't know I needed to be sober.
**[00:17:53]** I was five and a half months sober when I got here.
**[00:17:56]** How much more sober am I gonna get?
**[00:18:02]** God changed me.
**[00:18:03]** I didn't care who changed me.
**[00:18:05]** He'd been changed.
**[00:18:07]** Roy was...
**[00:18:11]** I smuggled some stuff across the border to using my kids.
**[00:18:16]** It's a terrible story.
**[00:18:18]** You all have what?
**[00:18:20]** It's my cover.
**[00:18:22]** And the guy had hired me for the job, turned us all in.
**[00:18:27]** And when you play with snakes, you get bit.
**[00:18:30]** That was so reprehensible what I did.
**[00:18:37]** I drove a toy.
**[00:18:42]** Now I understand the kids now are on the road for four and a half years.
**[00:18:52]** And everybody has an ace in the hole.
**[00:18:55]** You got one?
**[00:18:56]** Mother, father, aunt, uncle, friend.
**[00:18:58]** Crashed out my cocks for a few days.
**[00:19:01]** Rested up, fattened up.
**[00:19:04]** And then my dad was an ace in the hole.
**[00:19:08]** He had a carriage house and the kids and I lived at it.
**[00:19:11]** And I just come off a hard road trip.
**[00:19:17]** And we were sitting there and I decided it's time for me to put my life back together.
**[00:19:20]** Because all I've ever wanted to be was a good father and a good son.
**[00:19:24]** So busy putting my life back together.
**[00:19:29]** And Albert called from Albuquerque.
**[00:19:33]** Said we got a problem.
**[00:19:38]** We got 30 kilos of really good graphs as far as it were as.
**[00:19:43]** And our driver got arrested on a traffic charge.
**[00:19:46]** And it's land and motel.
**[00:19:49]** We need somebody to bring it across.
**[00:19:52]** What do you do it?
**[00:19:54]** Well, I'm trying to get my life together.
**[00:19:56]** So I said, of course.
**[00:19:57]** I didn't do it for money.
**[00:20:05]** At that time it was $200 a key.
**[00:20:08]** That's chump change.
**[00:20:10]** I did it for prestige.
**[00:20:14]** I was the only one in the entire United States.
**[00:20:20]** This little cynic could think, could pull this off.
**[00:20:25]** I'm going to go into old Mexico and rescue against.
**[00:20:31]** I take great, I get tickled because you know who the president of Mexico is now?
**[00:20:40]** Man named Fox.
**[00:20:42]** That's Zorro.
**[00:20:44]** It was finally running the show.
**[00:20:47]** Anyway, so that piece was laying there and God used whatever it had.
**[00:20:58]** Bruce was incapable of committing that act again.
**[00:21:03]** And that's why I wanted it.
**[00:21:13]** Roy Nichols was a bank robber.
**[00:21:17]** Well, not really, he was a robber.
**[00:21:19]** He wasn't very good.
**[00:21:22]** But Roy's big kick was robbing supermarkets.
**[00:21:29]** He really liked the thrill of going from station to station to station.
**[00:21:33]** Because every minute you're in there, you're in higher danger.
**[00:21:37]** What he really liked was when he put a gun to your head and watched your face.
**[00:21:43]** Didn't do it for the money.
**[00:21:45]** So I began to identify with him.
**[00:21:51]** He was not capable of doing that anymore.
**[00:21:54]** And I asked him about it and he said, that's right, I've been changed.
**[00:21:58]** And God changed me.
**[00:21:59]** They didn't say, hey, change me.
**[00:22:06]** They didn't say my sponsor changed me.
**[00:22:09]** They didn't even say the big book changed me.
**[00:22:11]** God changed me.
**[00:22:14]** Now, Roy is an interesting case because we, by the way, went through the 12-step study school
**[00:22:24]** in five weeks.
**[00:22:25]** In the sixth week, I was given a new group.
**[00:22:28]** And with my sponsor's help, it was now my turn.
**[00:22:32]** And every now and then, Roy would get pissed at the group.
**[00:22:37]** Did you ever get pissed at your group?
**[00:22:41]** Just couldn't stand it anymore.
**[00:22:43]** And he disappeared for two or three weeks.
**[00:22:46]** And went back to sell out seven and hit out.
**[00:22:53]** And of course when he came out, I said, what are you been doing?
**[00:22:57]** He said, well, I was completely off-basin.
**[00:23:00]** I've been riding inventory so I can get clear.
**[00:23:03]** Now I can come back.
**[00:23:05]** Phil Guterres, God, I don't know.
**[00:23:18]** He had 13 kids.
**[00:23:20]** Obviously, he wasn't drunk all the time.
**[00:23:23]** Phil was a very dangerous human being.
**[00:23:30]** He came from Guam when he was 17 because they couldn't handle him anymore.
**[00:23:36]** He had a family here, so they sent him here.
**[00:23:40]** And a few years later, they wanted to send him back to Guam and Guam when taking,
**[00:23:47]** so they put him in our penitentiary.
**[00:23:50]** Because it seems the last time he got drunk he threw three people out of three-story window.
**[00:23:56]** Now I lived in sell B-4, nine-right.
**[00:24:01]** B-block, four-story up, nine-silled down on the right side.
**[00:24:09]** And this is a guy who throws people out of windows.
**[00:24:17]** And he came to me one day with a smile on his face.
**[00:24:22]** I don't know if you've seen oil smile, but this is the captain of the pirate ship.
**[00:24:31]** He said, I've been thinking.
**[00:24:33]** I've been here seven years and you're the first person I sponsored.
**[00:24:38]** You will stay sober.
**[00:24:43]** As you wish, Phil taught me about love.
**[00:24:52]** It starts right there, which is rescued of penitentiary.
**[00:25:03]** Nobody ever questioned Phil's touching his mouth.
**[00:25:07]** These were my mentors.
**[00:25:16]** I don't find the word sponsor in the big book.
**[00:25:19]** I do find the word protege, which well-defined.
**[00:25:26]** There's two places that define sponsorship, or it describes it without defining it.
**[00:25:33]** If you're serious about this, it says we suggest you find somebody who can show you
**[00:25:57]** precisely how they're recovered.
**[00:26:01]** We call that sponsorship now, and that's good.
**[00:26:04]** Sponsorship is so important that I don't want to demean it in any way, but it's gotten skewed.
**[00:26:11]** Sponsorship is the act of taking someone through a proven process that will awaken them to the spirit within.
**[00:26:31]** That's the only thing that's going to save your ass.
**[00:26:34]** I can't.
**[00:26:36]** Nobody else can.
**[00:26:38]** But the spirit will and does.
**[00:26:42]** So how do I tap into that?
**[00:26:46]** I'm asked to do the one thing I'm incapable of doing.
**[00:26:49]** Get honest.
**[00:26:54]** Anyway, that put me on a track of some things spiritually.
**[00:27:01]** We're healers, we're storytellers.
**[00:27:04]** We're not smart.
**[00:27:06]** We wouldn't be here.
**[00:27:08]** We'd be home watching law and order.
**[00:27:10]** I don't even know what it is, but it didn't sound nice to me.
**[00:27:20]** I like to watch Heaven Castel.
**[00:27:25]** So I look at the great healers.
**[00:27:32]** She's one.
**[00:27:34]** My wife is a nurse in a research unit where many of her babies died, so I watched her.
**[00:27:55]** She picked those babies up and packed them.
**[00:27:58]** That's all she did.
**[00:28:00]** And say, you're in the right place.
**[00:28:02]** You're going to be all right.
**[00:28:07]** That's what we're supposed to do when the new people come in.
**[00:28:13]** We take them by the hand, we touch them.
**[00:28:19]** Then I looked at the great master.
**[00:28:21]** And what was it he actually did?
**[00:28:27]** Well, he was kind of a traveler.
**[00:28:31]** He spent a lot of time on donkeys and dirt roads.
**[00:28:36]** He'd come upon some guy who was crippled, blind, had running sores, and sitting by the side
**[00:28:49]** of the road died.
**[00:28:51]** Now this guy thought he was alone because he was crippled and blind and had running sores.
**[00:29:00]** The master knew better.
**[00:29:02]** He was crippled and blind and had running sores because he thought he was alone.
**[00:29:08]** So the first thing the master did was say, you cannot be alone once that happens.
**[00:29:15]** You don't have to like it, but you're no longer alone.
**[00:29:19]** Then in giving this, you don't have to do this anymore, you know.
**[00:29:25]** He sounded off mayor.
**[00:29:31]** And because he had the understanding that I am you and you are me, then he would say to
**[00:29:41]** them, would you like to get up?
**[00:29:46]** Not everybody wants to get up.
**[00:29:49]** And if the man said, well, yeah.
**[00:29:54]** He'd say, all right, I'll be real still because I'm going to give you the magic.
**[00:30:00]** Get up.
**[00:30:03]** And he said it with such conviction that it was believable.
**[00:30:13]** Believe the lies ran out the window.
**[00:30:18]** So my task since they got to A was to be believable.
**[00:30:26]** I am an alcoholic.
**[00:30:31]** I know exactly what that means.
**[00:30:34]** I know I'm completely powerless over everything, protecting this thing.
**[00:30:39]** In fact, Janice, some night when you got nothing but law and order, there's a repeat.
**[00:30:45]** Just tie yourself in your chair and let her run.
**[00:30:54]** Make sure you're tied down tight.
**[00:31:02]** So if I come and look you in the eye and tell you, you don't ever have to drink again,
**[00:31:07]** you don't.
**[00:31:08]** And I can say that with certainty because I have it.
**[00:31:13]** And I'm incapable of not drinking.
**[00:31:16]** But I haven't.
**[00:31:18]** And if you'd like to learn how that occurs, I'll show you.
**[00:31:26]** I'm not good as a relationship counselor.
**[00:31:32]** Well, I've never been able to figure out how to have a successful, sick relationship.
**[00:31:37]** What can I do?
**[00:31:44]** We didn't spend a whole lot of time worrying about not drinking and sobriety.
**[00:31:49]** We just didn't.
**[00:31:52]** We spent most of our time not learning new stuff but getting rid of the old stuff.
**[00:32:02]** So it isn't in the way.
**[00:32:04]** You got a busy mind?
**[00:32:06]** Shut it off.
**[00:32:07]** The only way I know what to deal with issues is create brand new issues.
**[00:32:15]** I'm tired.
**[00:32:23]** So I'm not good at that.
**[00:32:26]** If you come to me and ask me to just sponsor which job should I take, first one is going
**[00:32:33]** to give you money for God's sake.
**[00:32:36]** You're never going to be CEO of General Motors.
**[00:32:40]** But you might make a good dishwasher, I don't know.
**[00:32:43]** Just take the damn job.
**[00:32:46]** Early on, Bruce said, are you tired of getting busted?
**[00:32:53]** Quit going with those cops.
**[00:32:55]** Oh, probably it takes a little time to catch up down there.
**[00:33:18]** Said, would you like some money?
**[00:33:26]** Of course.
**[00:33:29]** Get a job.
**[00:33:33]** And once you've got it, you might even think about showing up for it now, man.
**[00:33:41]** And while you're there, you might want to do some work.
**[00:33:44]** And at the end of a prescribed period that they decide, they'll just give you money.
**[00:33:50]** It'll never be enough, but it will always be enough.
**[00:33:54]** So I don't have any money problems.
**[00:33:59]** I'm ready to rich women.
**[00:34:06]** Yeah, rich beyond belief.
**[00:34:11]** One of my heroes is Mickey.
**[00:34:20]** He's getting trouble now and then.
**[00:34:26]** When he went to the guidebook, he said, when you're screwed up, go find so many more screwed up.
**[00:34:37]** Let's see if you can help him.
**[00:34:40]** And sometimes the best self I can give you is to tell you how screwed up I am.
**[00:34:45]** Then you'll feel better.
**[00:34:49]** Then maybe we can do something.
**[00:34:50]** He'd go down to detox.
**[00:34:53]** Talk to drugs.
**[00:34:58]** My real hero and that family's Marie, she puts up with this shit.
**[00:35:11]** One last thing that I want to turn over to my two dear friends.
**[00:35:16]** God uses what's at hand.
**[00:35:18]** And you taught me, absolute honesty is absolute.
**[00:35:21]** What does absolute mean?
**[00:35:23]** Means absolute.
**[00:35:24]** What does thorough mean?
**[00:35:26]** Thoroughly.
**[00:35:28]** And so when I came out, I was supposed to go back to Texas and the same parole officer changed his mind.
**[00:35:41]** I went to the federal judge and said, he's been in AA for a year and a half.
**[00:35:47]** Let's put him on the street and watch him for six days.
**[00:35:50]** We'll know where he's going to beg him.
**[00:35:52]** So they did.
**[00:35:56]** Now, it was a memorial day weekend.
**[00:35:58]** I had $17 in that suit that gave you the flashing sign on the back, said, just out.
**[00:36:10]** And after the fetch process, they turned me over to the state.
**[00:36:15]** And this was an old, six foot six former narcotics cop.
**[00:36:22]** I was the acquaintance of his.
**[00:36:26]** So I'm not a drug addict, but I was a pretty good dealer.
**[00:36:31]** It was back in the days when you gave officers acid away.
**[00:36:39]** I'd hope nobody put it in the reservoir.
**[00:36:46]** And his worst to me was, do you report to me every night after work, which means get a job by tomorrow or back you go.
**[00:36:54]** Not a hell of a lot to interpret or to process.
**[00:36:59]** Get a damn job.
**[00:37:01]** So I knew I could work at Burger King out in Aurora.
**[00:37:06]** And understand, I truly do live by the spirit, the promptings of the spirit.
**[00:37:15]** Never been wrong yet.
**[00:37:18]** And I'm in pretty good shape spiritually.
**[00:37:22]** And got to the bus stop and the bus had a new sign on it.
**[00:37:27]** They have exact fare.
**[00:37:30]** Drivers carry no change.
**[00:37:32]** Couldn't get on the bus.
**[00:37:35]** But I'm away out of the jail.
**[00:37:44]** One of the guys they did time with gave me a little notice, said, if you need to work, just go see this guy.
**[00:37:50]** So I can't get on this bus.
**[00:37:53]** And he's only three blocks away.
**[00:37:55]** Minute man, daily labor service.
**[00:38:00]** He didn't say get a job.
**[00:38:02]** General Modi said, get a job.
**[00:38:05]** So I walked on down there.
**[00:38:08]** And total absolute honesty is, it's a trip.
**[00:38:14]** You're at risk every time you do it.
**[00:38:16]** Walked into Jack's little place of business.
**[00:38:22]** I said, Jack, my name is John Prince.
**[00:38:25]** And I just got out of the penitentiary.
**[00:38:29]** I'm an alcoholic and I've also had a little drug problem.
**[00:38:33]** But I need a job.
**[00:38:37]** He said, you're just what I've been looking for.
**[00:38:40]** Well, in my position I'll take anything he's got.
**[00:38:47]** He's got things to fill.
**[00:38:49]** So he got me on a hotel room and changed that obvious suit into some jeans.
**[00:39:01]** And God uses what's at hand.
**[00:39:06]** We went down to the Dickson paper company.
**[00:39:10]** Dickson said, well, we don't hire ex-cons.
**[00:39:14]** They don't bother me, I'm not an ex-con.
**[00:39:17]** I'm a man and I've been the president.
**[00:39:19]** There's a difference.
**[00:39:22]** But we can't start it until tomorrow.
**[00:39:24]** If you work on your payroll, we can start it.
**[00:39:27]** So we went back down and Jack was one nervous.
**[00:39:31]** He said, I've got one more opening.
**[00:39:33]** If you want to work today, you can.
**[00:39:35]** This is about 11.
**[00:39:37]** And this young kid with a bandage on his arm,
**[00:39:43]** he and I went out to Abbott Laboratories.
**[00:39:46]** Abbott makes the stuff I like the very best.
**[00:39:49]** So I'm spending the afternoon unloading boxcars or trailers into a bandage that I work hard.
**[00:39:57]** And made the discovery that it's gone.
**[00:40:01]** It's just gone.
**[00:40:04]** Didn't want it.
**[00:40:06]** I worked so hard they offered me a full-time job and I had enough sense to say that I don't think so.
**[00:40:14]** So I went back to Dick's and paper the next day and unloading boxcars or paper.
**[00:40:25]** And I checked in at York Street because that's where he told me to go.
**[00:40:30]** Don't miss York Street.
**[00:40:33]** It's the best reason in the world to stay sober.
**[00:40:39]** So I was able to kind of help some of the other guys get some job.
**[00:40:48]** A guy named Al who was about six weeks sober.
**[00:40:52]** He and I went to work unloading boxcars.
**[00:40:58]** This is in June of July, hot.
**[00:41:02]** And he looked in the boxcar where I was loading stuff out and said,
**[00:41:08]** do me a favor, climb down here and look down the tracks and tell me what you see.
**[00:41:14]** Big, unugly, molting parrot walking toward us.
**[00:41:22]** I said, I see an ugly parrot.
**[00:41:25]** He said, thank God.
**[00:41:27]** I thought I was 17.
**[00:41:29]** He said, you know we've got to catch it.
**[00:41:40]** Because we're going to tell this story.
**[00:41:42]** York Street, no we don't have a bird.
**[00:41:45]** So we all got him a parrot and I had some fun.
**[00:41:52]** A couple months later, they called me in and offered me a job on the docks working for them.
**[00:42:00]** Apparently the higher men who have been to prison.
**[00:42:03]** Well, that meant I had to fill out an application.
**[00:42:07]** They want your last ten years of work history.
**[00:42:12]** Let's see, 1966, Doug's mother.
**[00:42:22]** You know, it's what it did for a living.
**[00:42:27]** And they never read them anyway.
**[00:42:29]** They just went ahead and hired me.
**[00:42:31]** And a couple months after that, the dispatcher called me in.
**[00:42:41]** And he had my application and he had a funny look on his face.
**[00:42:46]** He said, did you really do that?
**[00:42:49]** I said, yeah, I did.
**[00:42:51]** He said, did you get it across?
**[00:42:52]** I said, yeah, I did.
**[00:42:54]** He said, well I've been thinking.
**[00:42:57]** We have this little delivery truck that delivers paper to the print houses in downtown Denver
**[00:43:03]** and goes out east on copaction, deliver sacks.
**[00:43:07]** It seems to me you have the necessary skills to get things from here to there under difficult circumstances.
**[00:43:17]** So I got that job, which set me up for being able to make a very important amendment.
**[00:43:28]** I don't have time to talk about it, but it's very important.
**[00:43:37]** A real job, driving a truck.
**[00:43:47]** So whatever, just be honest, tell the truth.
**[00:43:52]** I've got to decide who the car is going to fall.
**[00:44:02]** I'm about to run out of steam.
**[00:44:05]** And I don't want to keep my steam in the car, so I'm going to have to do something different.
**[00:44:11]** Knowing that I would not have the standard.
**[00:44:18]** Knowing also that, well you're all lovely.
**[00:44:29]** Love me and brought me here for that.
**[00:44:31]** I'm only the messenger.
**[00:44:33]** It isn't about me.
**[00:44:35]** So I got two big guns.
**[00:44:40]** One out of Seattle, a lot of the Manhattan County was.
**[00:44:49]** And know this.
**[00:44:58]** I love you.
**[00:45:10]** And one of my old mentors described that for me.
**[00:45:13]** Love is the active concern for the welfare and the growth of that which we love.
**[00:45:19]** So I love you.
**[00:45:23]** I know it's scary.
**[00:45:31]** So I was looking at, of course I'm looking at my life over because it's short.
**[00:45:35]** What's my legacy?
**[00:45:42]** Because of the presence of God and whatever has given me.
**[00:45:49]** I've been able to open a lot of people up for they could love me.
**[00:45:53]** That means they're now open to love.
**[00:45:56]** Let me go.
**[00:45:57]** Active concern for the welfare and the growth of that which we love.
**[00:46:11]** So it is.
**[00:46:12]** Well, West Parish.
**[00:46:14]** God, he was lovely.
**[00:46:17]** Man.
**[00:46:18]** So this loaned tech showed up in my life 14 years sober,
**[00:46:27]** going struck, revving mad because you've been in an A2 law.
**[00:46:31]** And had no clues to what that meant.
**[00:46:38]** And I watched him wake up.
**[00:46:41]** And I would like you to hear.