Just before my 60th birthday I ended up in a strange land, Thailand, in a hotel room on Pattya Beach about to end my life when I fell to my knees at 3am and cried out to my Heavenly Father "Please help me!" To some He may speak in an audible voice, but He spoke to me from within by His Spirit - and so He does to this day. And to this day I have followed that Spirit and it's been a very strange journey-because I am not running the show any more AT ALL!
I do not follow man, I follow Him and I HONOUR Him, because it was He that saved me from death - not AA or any human being.
At 8am a drunk with a huge hangover did not hesitate. He took one look at me, reached for his wallet and handed me enough money to 'get the hell outa there', get a bus back to Bangkok Airport and 3 days later I'm being dropped off at an AA meeting in Cairns, Australia. I swore I would never, ever go back to AA again. But I knew, when the lady driver slowed down the car outside that meeting that HE wanted me to go in. I went in totally against my own will - and when I sat down in that meeting He spoke again "This is MY Idea (AA). Do what they tell you to do." Now that statement is forever unfolding in revelation to me.
Some months later I saw the people in the meeting were certainly not telling me how to recover from alcoholism. But the first one hundred in the Big Book told me precisely, specifically, exactly how. And I did.
In 2006, the Company I was working for wanted to send me to Mackay for four weeks (750 km south). I first found out if there were any AA meetings in Mackay. There was. So I went. They put me up in a beautiful Resort and after I was there for a couple of weeks I suddenly realised the fridge was stacked with alcohol. It had been all the time but it may as well have been empty. Then I knew the obsession to drink had been removed. It had been for some time. I had recovered from alcoholism! From then on I began to share my story at meetings with a passion, and the more I did the more I began to see the really sick state of the Fellowship. 'They' were now telling me to share it more passionately the more they rejected it.
The last night I was there a young man approached me after the meeting and asked me about the message I carried. He was a doctor, had been in the Fellowship for six years and was nearing the point of suicide. I left him with a CD "The Doctor's Opinion" segment of Joe & Charlie, gave him my phone number and returned to Cairns.
Then my sharing in Cairns began to heat up. The more I began to reveal the Big Book, the more opposition I received - and the more I felt alone, even from my sponsor who heard my 5th step but never really shared much of the Big Book with me. One night he handed me a book entitled "How It Worked" by Mitchell K. He told me he refused to read it, I may as well have it. I took it with gladness, read it and suddenly my whole life made complete sense!! I have not had a human sponsor since.
Adam, the doctor from Mackay, took to the Joe & Charlie CD like a duck to water and one night I came home from yet another meeting of rejection of the message I carry - there was his email, the best step one I had ever heard! He got it! I became his sponsor and he was 750 km away.
I tried everything in Cairns to carry the message. I began to sponsor a woman nobody else would touch. I had pleaded with the ladies in the Fellowship but they would not, or could not help her. She asked me. I tried really hard and began to get results and those who had rejected her stepped in again and stopped it. I gave away CD's, even bought new CD players for some who did not have one. I really "TRIED" to carry the message with all that was in me and I began to feel like Bill in the Hotel lobby. No thought of a drink - but I needed somethin'! My last try was a bloke who had spent forty years of his life in jail. He was trying to do a lot of 'service work' with the Fellowship, which they do, and at 7:30 one morning I finally got his answer "I don't like your God!" With that I put the phone down and went and bought a plane ticket for Mackay. I'll let Adam tell you the rest from his story on our website:
A few days later, alone in my room with my Big Book open, I started to listen to my sponsor's gift to me. The recording of Joe and Charlie's Journey to Recovery week-end finally unlocked the Doctor's Opinion for me. I discovered that I have a two-fold illness - of body and mind. I am physically allergic to alcohol. The manifestation of this allergy is that when I drink I crave more. I can do nothing about this allergy. I will die with it. I will never be able to drink safely because of it.
Meanwhile, my mind is obsessed with alcohol. I am perpetually irritable, restless and discontent. After drinking, I am remorseful, ashamed and full of guilt. This fuels my irritability, restlessness and discontent. My mind knows that the only time it doesn't feel irritable, restless and discontent is when it is taking a drink. So it pushes and prods and cajoles, using emotion in every way it knows how, so eventually I drink again. This sets off the allergy and I crave more. But for me the clincher always was that sometimes I didn't ACT on the craving. So I tell myself I don't have a problem. So I drink again, act on the craving, blackout and am left with remorse and guilt all over again.
The fact is, for reasons yet obscure, I have lost the power of choice in drink. My so-called willpower becomes practically non-existent. I am unable at certain times, to bring into consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. I am without defense against the first drink.
This realization hit me like a thunder bolt and I immediately e-mailed my experience to my sponsor
One week later he flew into town and over three days took me through to Step 5. One week after this I was part way through Step 9 and practicing Steps 10 and 11 on a daily basis. I found, for the first time in my life, that inner feeling of discomfort was gone. The obsession to drink had been removed. Delivered by the truth, I had RECOVERED from alcoholism. [end quote]
Then I returned to Cairns and began to search ... where are the recovered alcoholics? Joe and Charlie had carried this message all around the world for over 20 years to an estimated 500,000 alcoholics. What happened? Surely it can't be just me!
Well ..."A sower went out to sow, and as he sowed some fell by the wayside , and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up, it was scorched and because it had no root it withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. And other fell on good ground, and it did yield fruit and sprang up and increased and brought forth, some thirty, some sixty, and some a hundredfold. He that has ears to hear, let him hear."
I began to search the internet and found "There Is A Solution" Group in England. I emailed - no reply. I found the Primary Purpose Website with some amazing stuff like "It Aint In The Book". Then I got onto the PPG Dallas website and downloaded a talk by Chris R. I had never heard anyone in AA talk like that! I knew then and there that my Heavenly Father was orchestrating everything that was happening to me. And from the website I found an address of someone actually in Australia and so I wrote...
.....No reply.
Adam was steadily growing but we were 750km apart. And I was alone and grossly rejected in Cairns. Suddenly, I was offered a job at TWICE my normal salary. I had nothing in the bank, but I knew something must be coming up for that to happen .. and not for my own selfish ends. Then I contacted Cliff B. in PPG Dallas and got a reply immediately. My story just poured out over two emails and the HE spoke to me again "Go to Dallas". So I bought a plane ticket. I had just enough money to get there but I had to stay minimum of four weeks for a cheap fare. Who cares. If God wants me to go, I go. Half way around the world to Texas, USA. I am going to Texas!
When I was young I used to love to sing a song called "The Ballad of The Alamo". I have been a singer/musician in my time and I just loved to sing that song. I still do. Well, for some strange reason I hired a movie called "The Alamo". I was so moved by the courage of those few undisciplined, volunteer soldiers who defended her against overwhelming odds. They were all slaughtered but they inspired Sam Houston's army to annihilate the enemy in minutes! And Texas was won.
So here I am, off to Texas - not Thailand, and recovered - not fuelled with alcohol, but fuelled with a Spirit I could not begin to explain, except that God is EVERYTHING to me.
I was offered to stay at a rehab owned and operated by one of the members of PPG in Denton, 40 miles north of Dallas. They were all very hospitable and offered me to stay for free - which really suited me because at the prices in the US I just could not afford to stay at a Hotel or Motel for very long. I had to wait well over a month for my flight home.
Anyway, I stayed there and went to all the Dallas meetings and tried to help some of the guys at the rehab with the program. I went to all the wind-up joints. I was given CD's and notes and a great stack of stuff to bring back to Australia. I knew we had to start our own Group. But Adam lived in Mackay and I lived in Cairns and we were both really alone with the message. We would communicate over the phone early hours of the morning US time and I'm in a strange land. It's a big world when you're alone. But I knew God was bigger and He was always my guiding light. My all-consuming desire is what would He have me do.
Well I did what I could. The owner of that rehab mentioned he needed a pocket computer and in the course of my day I came across a bargain and bought him one. Some guys in the rehab needed an MP3 player to help them listen to talks on the message and I got them one. I never thought this up - it all just happened. And one day there was this young twenty year old addict come in to sought his life out again. He had to get a job to pay his way, which he did. We drove him to work one morning. I thought he was a gentleman. Three days later he was dead from an overdose, and we had to explain to his bereaved parents it was not their fault. He suffered from an illness very few understand.
My prayer was constantly "Father, what would you have me do". I just wanted to get back to Australia and 'get the show on the road'!
The funny thing is I crossed the international dateline over the Pacific Ocean New Year's Eve - so for anyone on that aircraft New Year 07 did not exist! God cracks jokes with me sometimes in the strangest ways.
I got back to Cairns. Again no job, nowhere to live and not much in the bank. But I had some possessions in storage particularly my prized possession, a Honda 750cc motorcycle. I got a motel room immediately and went to the AA meetings in Cairns to share the news of the great group I had found in Dallas carrying the message of recovery, and the excitement I felt something was really happening in the Fellowship. They were really not interested. The few ones I had been helping had obviously already been corrupted since I left. The leading of the Spirit was "Go to Mackay".
So I sold my prized possession, and flew to Mackay. I rang Adam and told him I was coming, that we already had a group and it's called the Primary Purpose Group of Alcoholics Anonymous Mackay. We had our first meeting where I was to live until this day - a room in a pub. Not long after our first meeting we acquired a church hall that can accommodate hundreds and we still have it today. From our first meeting we were committed to the program of action, the Traditions and a simple prayer each day "What can I do today for the man who is still sick." What that is is God's business; we just ask to be shown. I had a great job in a few days. I have a great job today. I am a civil engineering designer. I have used computers since they were invented.
And obviously that is my way of talking to you today.
I live in the "Ambassador Hotel" Mackay and we have a great relationship with the publican. He even allowed us to put a stack of cards on the bar entitled "Are You An Alcoholic?" Then he decided to give me a room with my private balcony - and dropped the rent!
Every day since our first meeting we all ask "What can I do today for the man who is still sick", for we have found something REALLY wonderful.