The Freedom of Finally Admitting He Was an Alcoholic – Johnny H.

Hi everybody, my name's Johnny and I'm an alcoholic. I'm glad to be here tonight and I'M GLAD TO BE SOBER. You know when, if you're new here tonight, and there probably are some new people here, I hope the word being sober doesn't offend you as bad as it offended me when I came to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. You see, when I said in my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous on the fourth day of November 1959, and you talked to me about being sober, I didn't think AlcoholicsAnonymous had anything to offer me. And the reason I didn'T think that because I was as physically sober when I came to my first meetIng of AlcoholicAnonymous as I am right now, as physically sober. But that always seemed to be my problem. If I could have stayed loaded forever, I'd have never came to Alcoholics Not. But I kept getting interrupted out there on my happy road of destiny by people in them little black and white cars. And I get a kick out of it. You know, there's a big deal going on about all this new stuff that goes on nowadays. They've got a big thing going down in my part of the world called intervention. I want you to know the Los Angeles County Sheriff knew about intervention in 1940. and they still do a pretty good job of it. But I'm glad to be here, and I just hope that you hang on and I hope that you don't let anything that I say keep you from attending another meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous because I'm by no wild stretch of the imagination a consultant, a counselor, or an authority on a program of Alcoholic Anonymous. I'm an example good, bad, or indifferent to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous works. Nothing else. And it hasn't been necessary for me to drink anything, swallow anything, smoke anything, or stick anything in my arm for 29 years and 10 months and 2 or 3 days. But that hasn't got anything to do with me. I'm glad I'd like to thank Gordon or whoever is responsible for me having the privilege of participating in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. You see, I have always considered it a privilege to be allowed to come here and sit in meetings of AlcoholicsAnonymous. I have also considered it privileged that you let me do anything in AlcoholicsAnenomous. I have never been able to get it through my head, and I pray God that I never do, that I have some type of an inherited right to be here just because I don't drink alcohol. I don' t have that right. It's a privilege for me to come and sit with you good people because I didn' t do anything in my life prior to the fourth day of November, 1959 that would allow me the privilege of living the way I live today. Nothing. I have looked at it a long, long time, many times and I would love to be able to say oh, I did that now I get this because if I could do that I'd go back and do that again I have to assume that my sobriety is a gift from God and it's a great privilege for me to sit around you fantastic people the people of Alcoholics Not you taught me to love you very deeply probably more than anything else in the world and that word itself and the feelings I get when I'm with you are things I did not bring to Alcoholics Anonymous with me. Now, I'm extremely pleased to be here tonight fully clothed and in my right mind and I don't tell you that for any particular reason other than the fact that the longer I stay sober in AlcoholicsAnonymous the more necessary it becomes for me to remember from whence I came and I never want to forget that a little over 30 years ago I was crawling around on my knees in a cell in solitary confinement in a maximum security penitentiary barking at the moon. Because of a loving God as he expressed himself through this program called Alcoholics Anonymous, it's no longer necessary for me to crawl around on my hands and knees like an animal. If I get nothing else out of this deal, I guess I could live with that for a long time. It makes me feel good. I'd like to be able to stand here tonight without any shadow or doubt in my mind and tell you that's where alcohol and drugs took me to. Oh, I'd love to be there. I'd also like to tell you that But you see, that's where I took me to. The only thing that alcohol and drugs did in my life, they kept me alive long enough to find Alcoholics Anonymous. That's all. I'm as sure as I'm standing here without alcohol working in my wife, I'd have blown my brains out before I was nine years old. I've always been an emotional misfit. I never belonged anywhere. I never liked anything. I didn't care about anything. I was bitter and I was angry and I don't know where all that came from. I hadn't even had a drink when I felt that way. I just felt that way. I didn't like where I was, who I was and who I wasn't around. I don't know where that came from. My family were all drunks. Everybody in my family drank. They made whiskey, they drank whiskey and they sold whiskey. And they did all the things that that type of an environment comes to. They used to gather up on Saturdays and they would drink each other's whiskey and steal each other women and beat each other up? Oh, they had a hell of a time down there. I guess whoever survived was the king for the week. I don't know how they worked their deals out. I really haven't understood it. But you see, I understand that. I understand violence. I understanding that. I understand hostility so bad and bitter that you just want to lash out and kick something. It's almost like a spiritual experience when you put your foot in somebody's belly. I said, oh, God, it gives me goosebumps to think about it right now. I just, three or four faces flash in front of me. I was able to see what I was never able to understand, what I would never be able to grasp was the confusion in my life when I saw these same people on Wednesday who beat each other up and did all these things to each other on Saturdays would put their arms around one another on Wednesdays and say, we love one another because we're family and I guess I said to myself I don't know if that's what love is you can keep it because I never remember ever one time in my life ever uttering that word to any other human being who lived upon the face of this earth prior to coming into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that word was not in my vocabulary and there's a very good reason for that I'm a taker I'ma taker of things I'm an user of people so therefore I'm a loser. I'm selfish, I'm self-centered, and I'm self-serving, and I've got an ego bigger than this whole room. Now you don't need much more than that to have a bad start in life. You throw a couple in with a bad attitude like that and just... And see, people like me take it. See, I never... I hear people in alcoholics now talk about I drank up this and I drank up that. I didn't drink up nothing. I used up everything that came into my life and everybody who came into my life. As long as you had something that I wanted, I used you. And when I got through with you, I just trashed you aside like so much trash going on about my business. And I never told you I loved you because people like me don't tell people we love them because there's a very good reason. If I told you that I loved them, then I gave you an edge. And I didn't give edges. I kept edges. Because takers and users don't give edges. Takers and losers have to have the edge. Because if I don't have the age, I can't use you. So therefore, I never said that. But you see, I knew there was something wrong with me. I didn't know what it was. There was some sort of a restlessness deep inside my soul that I didn' t understand. And I knew I had to have an answer. And I went places looking for answers. And whenever I got there, expecting the answer from people who were supposed to know the answer, I became away from there more confused than I was when I went there. You see, my grandmother lived until she was 90 years old and she never drank alcohol. My grandmother. My grandmother would sit right in the middle of that sea of insanity and watch them crazy people kill one another. I remember she used to be in the kitchen cooking, and they'd come flying through the kitchen with blood dropping off from them, and Grandma would just jump back and say, Oh, yes, Jesus loves you. They'd come fine through there. I'd look at Granny and look at them. I thought, Well, I'll go where Granny goes and do what Granny does. I'll be like Granny. But I never figured out one very simple little thing. Wherever I went, I went. I knew that would be a little deep for Reno, but try to hang on to it as much as you can. Because I don't get any deeper than that. If you want anything any more intellectual than that, you'll have to get Clancy here to talk to you, for God's sake. I'm a simpleton. That's the deepest I got. See, I took that bad attitude with me. That rotten attitude, that bitterness, that hatefulness, that feeling of difference and anxiety and all that stuff, I took it with me to church. And I sat there in the back row of church and waited for a guy to get up there with his long robes of authority and tell me why he felt that way. That's what I wanted him to tell me. I wanted Him to tell Me what to do about it more than anything in the world. And He said, I was supposed to love and honor and respect My parents. He said I was opposed to love My brothers and My sisters and I didn't. I hated them. I hated Them for a reason I didn' t even understand. God, I felt guilty about that. We came frightened to death sitting in there. The people were going to find out I was hating when I was supposed to be loving. I didn't know what to do about that. I walked outside the door of the church that day. The old man was standing there drunk and hungover. He tapped me on the head and said, Son, if you continue to go to church, you're going to grow up to be just like me. I don't know how he got that from my old man, but I haven't been back to church since. And that hasn't got anything to do with church. It's got to do avec my old men. I didn'y like my old mens. I hated my old mans. My old man wasn't drunk. I lived in a house where there were two drunks working. and that's frightening. Little kids laying in the house in the middle of the night and listening to the sound of a drunken house, screaming and yelling and cussing and flesh hitting flesh and breaking furniture and deadly silence. Every once in a while the old man come got me and started kicking me around. He did it to my brothers, he did it for me. That wasn't the most terrible time. The most frightening time is when they weren't there and they were out there and I knew they were coming in and I had to think. I had lay there and cower up in that little corner behind my brother and think about the things that were going on. My uncles who lived in penitentiaries, my aunts who worked in those houses on the other side of the tracks, my old man who beat up my mother, my mother who beatup my old men. It dawned on me one night what the problem was. It was alcohol. They drank, and they did those things. I'm not going to drink. I'm going to be like them. I'm doing better than they are. But see, out of curiosity, one day I took a drink of alcohol. Just out of curiousity. I got into my old mans bootleg hooch and took a drinking alcohol. and what happened to me that instant was that I sold myself into bondage at that instant not to alcohol or not later to the drugs that came into my life but to the feeling I got when I drank alcohol see that stuff that went down inside of me instilled a screaming madness it took me from the black pit of nothingness it stood me into the gray fringes of the business of living it installed in me an arrogance that said damn you world it's alright I'm not good enough to be around the good people but I'm too good to be around the bad people. It's okay right here. That's what alcohol did for me. And I'm going to tell you a strange secret. If alcohol still did that, I'd still drink it. But it don't do that anymore. Thank God. It quit working and I had to find another answer because I've always needed an answer and for a long time there, alcohol was an answer. It's an answer to the alcoholic. Alcohol is not the problem. Alcohol is the answer. But you see, if you're alcoholic sooner or later, your answer will turn into your problem and beat you to death. And that's what happened to me. And what happened with me when I drank happened to be every time I drank. There was no difference in the sequence. It was a sequence of events. I took a drink of alcohol, and three days later they pulled me out from underneath the bridge and stood me in front of a judge and sent me to the Hutchinson State Reform School. Twenty years later, I took another drink of alcohol, they pulled my out of a car in Compton, stood me up in front a judge and sentenced me to 20 years in the penitentiary. That's what happened to me when I drank. I got drunk and went places. I just traveled around out there. I went from reform school to reform school to junior penitentiares to penitentials to nut houses. Now they call them treatment centers. They treat them a little kinder than they used to treat me out there They taught me things like better living through electricity wait till I get to the point where I died you ought to get hilarious about that folks I remember I was on a furlough in front of a reform school and I oh I don't know I'm 11 or 12 years old somewhere around there and I'm sitting on this street corner with a gallon of Marca Petri red wine which was my drink I drank that whole gallon of wine I'm sober as I am right now scared to death I didn't know what was wrong I didn' t know what to do my magic wasn't magic anymore and a guy come along and tapped me on the shoulder and said why don't you try these and he gave me some pills I don't remember saying to him what are those do you think they'll bother me if I take them I just thank God they weren't X-lax well I could be standing here tonight as an adult child of a laxative taker I would have been functional, but Mother was on the toilet all the time when I was little. You know, as funny as that sounds, I hear stuff stupider than that in Alcoholics Not. Like that had something to do with me. I never knew that you could hate something and it would make you whole. I would never have had to come to you if that was the case. see I came to you and did what you told me to do when I run out of excuses people places and things to blame for my dilemma nobody's fault it's my fault I did it to me whatever happened to me in my life I did to me nobody else did it I did I'm sitting on that same street corner on a furrow from another reform school not long after that and I'm eating pills and drinking wine and nothing's working and a guy stuck a needle in my arm And for the next 14 years of my life, I stuck needles in my arm and ran in out of institutions. That's what I do. I rip and I run and I use and I abuse and I destroy everything that comes in contact with me. I'm like a plague on life out there. If you come in contact avec me, I'll destroy you because I'm a user. I'm an abuser. I'm not a taker, so therefore I'm loser. I cared about nothing or nobody. I had no conscious concern for any other human being who lived upon the face of this earth. Only my own well-being, only my own comfort, my own sickness, which is me, my selfishness and my self-centeredness. That's my sickness. 1951, I'm on my way to the penitentiary. My mother stood in a visiting room in the old Los Angeles County Jail and screamed at me through there, I was a murderer. It seemed that my 17-year-old brother had gotten into some of my poison and took an overdose up and died. I didn't know how to handle that very well. I couldn't handle most things. I got mad at it, made it go away. Three days later, I stood handcuffed between two detectives down underneath a tree where they buried the only thing in life I cared anything about, my baby brother. With all the guilt and shame and humiliation and degradation of lifetime hanging around my shoulders, I liked to have cried, but I didn't know how. I didn' t have the simple gift of tears that God gives every creature that is born on the face of this earth and the reason I didn''t have them was because I didn ''t think they were necessary. I went on to the penitentiary and I stayed there four and a half years. They came out there four und a half year sicker than I was when I went in there because my disease doesn't get any better just because I don't induce any chemicals into it. It gets worse. Never better, always worse. So I came out of there sicker than I was when I went in there trying to prove what a psychiatrist in San Quentin told me wasn't true. He said, Johnny, people like you don't change. He says, You're doomed to die in an institution. He took me down and showed me a little green room. He says You're going to end up here hot shot. And I told him, Not me. I'm different. I'm separate. Trent, the alcoholic's theme song. I'm going to tell you something, folks. It's very frightening to me. The people in this room who are going to die drunk are goingto die drunk with one thought on their head. My case is different. I may die drunk, but if I do, that will be my theme song My case is different. I don't have to do this anymore. My case is different." I lived with that idea in my head, my case is difficult, my case was different, and I damn near died. The only time it's ever stood me in good stead is when that psychiatrist in San Quentin wanted to give me a load of botany. My case was difficult. I come lost out of the institution bounty terminal. I had that deal beaten. Six months later, I'm laying in a nut house kicking and screaming. And that's when I made my round to some of the better laughing academies in the country interviewing psychiatrists. I said there was my wraparound overcoat on. They talked to me about my mother and I talked to them about their mother. That's when they introduced me to better living through electricity. Along about the third day after that treatment, I started to remember what they were doing to me. and I got angry. And they'd take me right back in front of that same guy again, and I'd attack him. They'd take my back and give me another little jolt for three days. You ever try to attack a psychiatrist with a straitjacket on? Oh, it's real wonderful. They'd just sit there with their pipe and smoke it and say, My God. I guess it would be a little strange, some fool sitting on the other side of the desk A straight jacket going this way. You know, what I pray to God is my last interview with a psychiatrist happened to me in a federal government hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, 30-some years ago. It's what I prayed to God as my last overview with one of them head doctors. I just, the monkey scared me to death. I remember moving into this man's office and sitting down across from his desk and looking up against the wall and looking at his degrees and his plaques and his diplomas. And I thought, maybe this guy knows something. You see, I still felt the same way that day as I felt sitting at my grandmother's knee at church when I was a child. I still had all the same things. Only now I've got a problem that's worse than all the rest of those problems put together. Now the things that I put in my system to make those problems go away no longer make them go away. Now I can't get rid of the nightmares. Now I can't get rid of the faces of the people I've harmed and the thing. Now I'm in trouble. Now I am in deep trouble. And the doctor looked at me and he said, Johnny, if you didn't drink these things and swallow these things and smoke these things and shoot these things, you wouldn't have any problems. You know, when I was a kid in Hutchinson State Reform School, my counselor told me if I didn't drank, I'd be okay. When I was in Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles, my counselor taught me if I did not drink, I would be okay When I was in Whittier State Reform School, my counselor told me if I didn't drink these things and swallow these things and smoke these things and shoot these things, I'd be okay. When I pressed in school for boys, they told me that. When I wasn't San Quentin, my psychiatrist told me that. When I isn't Folsom, they tell me that and now my long last journey with all things I sit across from this death. You know what none of them monkeys ever took into consideration? Every time they told me that, I was as physically sober as I am right now, every time. How many times I wanted to scream out, I'm good God, doctor, don't you understand? Because they don't understand. Don't you understand? Take this madness from inside of me, I wouldn't put those other things in me. Make it 1950 again, please. Wipe out that nightmare. I won't have to do this anymore. but i didn't know that i had no way of knowing that and so i had to go out there and live for a couple more years in the land of the living dead and a little over 31 years ago they tied me down to bed in the old los angeles county jail more dead than alive weighed 128 pounds and i was yellow it was a medical doctor trying to put in my bed tell me i was going to die i'd had two years of doing to me exactly what i wanted to do to me anytime i wanted to do to it, and that's what I did to me. That's what I said to me, that's my own self-will, my own self-centered, that is what happens to me in my own best judgment, that is what happened to me when I run my life, that is what I have done for my life running myself. That's me. I laid on that death bed, the doctor said, son you are going to die and there is nothing I can do for you. And I said ok, ok, and I laid there all day and all night and he came dancing back into my room the next morning and he said, Son you are gonna die and nothing I could do for you. And the third day he came into my room and I had a terror grip in me that I've never known before since in my entire lifetime. The idea came to me I was going to live and not die. I was gonna get up out of that bed and go to the penitentiary and come back out and start that rat race all over again, and I didn't want to do that. I laid there for 18 days and 18 nights. I didn' t eat, sleep, drink, or do anything. I just laid there. And one night, because I knew nothing better to do, I screamed out the only prayer I'd ever said in my life. I said, Oh God, help me. I thought for a long, long time nothing had happened. There was no blinding flashes of light. nobody come running down the hall with a dozen donuts saying we got an a meeting down there i just went to sleep for a little while i don't know how many of you ever kicked a two-year heroin habit but that's what i was doing that's the first time i've been asleep a long long time i'll tell you how sick i was two weeks later two short weeks later i'm up running around a jail looking for some more of the poison putting me back in a bed i'd just gotten off of and there's a very good reason for that because in the back of my mind where my problem seemed to be centered was the knowledge that once upon a time when I could not stand it any longer I could ingest something into my system and it was okay right now and right now is all I ever wanted right now and even though it wasn't working anymore and I knew it wasn'T working anymore I knew that it would if I could just find the right combination because it's the only thing that had ever worked. Good God, it's got to work again. So I got loaded again. And I stood in front of a judge who was sentenced to 20 years in the penitentiary. It didn't mean anything to me. That's the way I lived. But what he said to me next, he called me a blood-sucking parasite in society. He said I had no right being around decent people. He told a woman who was sitting in the courtroom who was carrying my child that she cared anything at all about her child that I'd never be allowed to lay eyes on it. And what that man said that day, he put into words what I had always known what I was. See, I have never been able to hide me from me. I have not been able I have ever been able to lie to me about me. I've always known what kind of a scum I was That's why I tried so desperately to get rid of me. That's what was so necessary for me to block off me from you. I always knew I was a taker. I have a long list of faces of the things and people that I've destroyed through my selfishness and my self-centeredness trying to make me feel better at the expense of some other human being. I knew that. That's the first time I'd ever heard it. And the evidence was so damning that my brain literally exploded. And for the next nine months of my life, I crawled around in a cell in solitary confinement barking at the moon, drifting in and out of total insanity. coming to every once in a while scraping my food off the wall wondering how I got it up there why I threw it at an insane rage and on the first Sunday in November 1959 I wandered into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous see I don't take any credit for coming to Alcoholics Anonymous nor do I take any credit for staying here from that day to this day if I'd have known where I was coming I wouldn't even have come I wasn't alcoholic the reason I came to my first meeting of Alcoholic Anonymous because the institution and I didn't let women come in there. I came to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous almost 30 years ago to smell perfume. And I've been honking and sniffing around here ever since. You got to be careful when you get those sickles in here, I'll tell you that. I remember I moved in and sit down in the back row in what I lovingly like to call my throne of contempt. I had my coat collar up and my shades on because I was cool. If I'd have been any cooler when I got here, I'd have froze to death for God's sake. Remember looking up on the backboard, I saw two big A's and I thought to myself, my God, I've wandered into an anti-aircraft brigade. I didn't know what Alcoholics Anonymous was. I said to this clown sitting next to me, what is this? He said, it's AlcoholicsAnonymous. Well, I sunk down in my seat. Gangsters weren't supposed to be hanging out with them winos. Could have been GangstersAnonymous or OverhipAnonymous or... How about DopeFiendsAnonymous? Ain't that macho? I mean, that's something you get your teeth into. You know what I mean? Makes addicts seem kind of candy-ass to me. I don't know about you, but you can get your teeth into that one. I hang into that. Hang in there, baby. I thought, well, I'll wait for these women to get up and tell their racy stories. Now, you've got to remember something. That when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, there weren't very many young pretty girls in AlcoholicsAnonymous. There just wasn't. These old gals got up to talk, and they said they drank for a long time. Hell, you could look at them and know they've been somewhere for a lot of time. They said I used to drink. I said, I'll bet you did. Bad, too. I know. You can tell. I mean, if you want to know anything, go to the back row and ask. They know everything, but they don't know how to stay sober back there. That's where I hung out. with my air of contempt and my arrogance. But the people of Alcoholics Anonymous hooked me that day because there was something about them I didn't understand. I couldn't understand why they drive 185 miles up that old back road to talk to a bunch of people who didn't want to listen to them for nothing. I couldn'T understand that. It was beyond my description. It was BEYOND my thought capabilities to understand that, and they ruined it to talk about God. I ran out of the room. God was the reason I was. It was not my fault. See, I'd run out of people, places, things, circumstances and conditions to blame for my dilemma. But it still had a kicker. See, for people like me, the thing that keeps them from going totally insane is my ability to blame somebody other than me for my own actions. And when I run out if people, place, things circumstances and condition, I could blame God for it. He don't talk back. It's God's fault. Listen sometimes. You hear it sometimes. I hear it all the time. Well, I guess if God wants me to have a job, he'll shoot it down here to the club. Next time you get hungry, go lock yourself up in a closet and pray for a hot dog. If God squirts you one through the keyhole, you call me. I've been looking for a deal like that all my life. I'll tell you, I'm not a very spiritual or religious man. But I tell you I've learned one very simple little thing about God since I've been around here and it's helped me very well. I've learn that my God will not do anything for me that I can do for myself. There's only been one simple little thing in my life I have never been able to do. One thing only. I couldn't do it before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I've been able to do it since I've been an alcoholic synonymous. I won't be able to do it from this day forward. Of myself and by myself, I cannot keep from taking a drink of alcohol. I can't do that. And yet, for over 29 years and 10 months, I haven't had a drink of alcohol or a mood-changing altering chemical in my system whatsoever. And what blows my mind even more than that is I haven'T had a conscious thought or a conscious desire to put any of that stuff in my system from the first moment I laid eyes on you this instant. And that doesn't make me wonderful or special. My God just seemed to understand that anybody as sick as I am cannot harbor a thought in his head for over 30 seconds without putting it into action. I'm just that way. My problem lays between my ears. It doesn't lay anywhere else. I don't have any desire to take a drink. I don' t have any craving for alcohol. matter of fact I don't want one a lot of people that I know that I sponsor they didn't want one either until they took it see alcoholics like me there comes a time when alcoholics like me have to drink they have to drink to preserve their sanity alcoholics like me blow their brains out cold sober cold sober that's when alcoholics commit suicide if they do it drinking it's accidental alcoholics now see I don't know about anything else but alcoholics folks I'm not talking about drinkers or heavy drinkers or non-drinkers or non alcoholics I only know about alcoholics because I are one and I discovered that here I kept coming back to your meetings you kept talking about God I kept leaving one day I sit in the back row I don' t remember my attitude being any different than it is I don''t remember anything different about that day at all except I do know that that's the day I had lived my entire lifetime for. That every rotten thing I'd ever done had driven me right up to the very gates of hell. See, I didn't even know I was in hell. I had no way of knowing when I woke up that morning that I was going to go sit in a room and some man was going to put the key into the gates of hell and let me out of there. I didn' t know that. If I'd have had that knowledge I'd never came to an AA meeting. I wasn' t conditioned to go to AA meetings. I was conditioned to go to doctors and teachers and preachers and wardens and psychiatrists and psychologists and all those people who have been giving me all that bum information all these years. I wasn't conditioned to go to drunks, but I didn't know that that day, so I went and sat in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and a little guy that I knew did 23 frat years in the penitentiary, a little man by the name of Les Hamlin is dead now, stood at a podium of Alcoholic Anonymous and told me that something that all those educated people didn't know. He never even had a sixth grade education. He told me I didn't have to live that way anymore if I didn' t want to. He said, You don't have to do it like this no more and nobody had ever told me that. They told me all my life don't drink, swallow, smoke and shoot but they never told me how to live without doing it. How do you live in a world that you don't understand? That you don' t belong in? That wants no part of you and you don''t want any part of? And the only thing that makes it It's bearable for just an instant, something that you put into your system. After the meeting, I went up to him. I said, how did he learn how to live, Wes? He told me about a book called Alcoholics Anonymous. He says, you go get that book, Johnny. I'll go and pray that you find some part of you in it. I guess he prayed real hard, that little fella. I've been a student of the book AlcoholicsAnonymous from that day to this day. And the only thing I've ever found in that book is me. I haven't looked for anything else. I'm not looking for a way to sober up the world or cure all of society's ills. I'm looking for a way to live peacefully and comfortably and joyously with me and the loving God that made me. There is a strange phenomenon that takes place in my life. It seems like to me that the closer I adhere to the principles that are written in that book, and the more willing I become to share that knowledge in this fellowship, just for the sheer joy of doing it, the more peaceful and the most comfortable and the merest joyous I live with me and the love of God that has made me, But I had a lot of trouble when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I was confused. I was refused here more than I'd ever been anywhere. I sit in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, I heard people get at podiums like this and say, I used to drink. Now I don't drink anymore, and everything is wonderful. I said, I'm not alcoholic then. I'm no drinker either. I'm as sober as you are, buster, and I'm crazy. So I'm non-alcoholic. Simple, isn't it? Logical. Alcoholics are logic. The keen alcoholic mind. Have you ever stopped to think about the only people who talk about the keen alcoholic mind are the alcoholics? You don't hear non-alcoholics talking about the keen alcoholic mine. Oh yeah, the keen alcoholic mind came in last night and peed in the linen closet. I sit in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. I heard people get up at podiums like this and say, you've got to get active in AlcoholicsAnonymous. I got up and ran around like a chicken with my head cut off. I picked up ashtrays and poured coffee and smiled at people. Well, it's wonderful here. Thirty days ago, I was just dead. But I wandered through them wonderful doors and got around you magnificent people. God has blessed me. and you newcomers keep coming back. Bless you, too. And I went back and set an inventory point and died. I was doing everything they told me to do and I'm crazy. I don't understand. I said to myself, see, I'm not alcoholic. If I was alcoholic, all I would have to do is not drink and pick up these damn dash trays and I'd be okay. I didn't know any better. And every time I talked to one of these people, they'd say, it's in the book. what's in the book? Oh, it's there. Mac was talking about it this afternoon. I'm going to tell you what it is so it doesn't have to confuse you. What it is, it's in that book, at least in the first 164 pages that I've tried to incorporate into my life one day at a time. What it Is is what I thought it was but it really wasn't when I took my first drink. What it is is what I thought it was, but it realmente wasn't when I swallowed my first pill. What it really isn't but what I though it was was when I had my first figs. What it IS is that piece of my life that I seemingly was born without. It was the end of my search. my search was over with. When I discovered what it was that was in that book, I no longer needed to look anywhere else. I never needed to find any other answer. And I found it the day I sat in a room with a man in a penitentiary and did what our program of recovery called a fifth step. I sat to this man's office for three and a half hours I told him about every rotten, filthy, corruptible thing I'd ever done in my life. And somewhere during that three and a half hour period of time I heard myself say to him that I was an alcoholic. And from way down deep inside of me there came a freedom that I carry with me to this very instant. See, I know as I stand here before you I know what's wrong with me. I'm an alcoholic I suffer from a disease called alcoholism That's what I have. It's a killer it's killed more people than all the combined wars and diseases and plagues in the history of man it destroyed more nations and more people than anything and that's what I have I have this killer illness that's getting worse as I stand here before you tonight that's why that's that's what I am see I'm not an alcoholic and anything when I was an alcoholic and something I couldn't have your program because see when I was an alcoholic and I separated me from you. See? I was different and I didn't have to do what you did. You see, when I became an alcoholic I had to do what you do. There ain't no way to beat that rap. I had a job and I had nothing to do with the 100 people who wrote that book of experiences did. They were alcoholic. I'm an alcoholic. I have to deal with it. If I'm a alcoholic and I have something that stays over so do you. But by the same token, if you're an alcoholic and you have to do something to stay sober, so do I. See, that makes me just like you. No better than, no worse than, just like You. I'm an alcoholic. And from that moment to this moment, I have never had any doubts about where I should be or what I should do. from that moment of discovery it become my great pleasure to do anything that you've asked me to do I sit in meetings of alcoholic synonymous in that penitentiary for a year and a half and I had one dream that one day you would let me come and sit with you I said to myself sitting in that penitentiary if they allow me to come and sit in their meetings I'll do anything they ask me to and when my telephone rings at my house my answer is this if the date's open it belongs to you If the date's open, it belongs to you. That makes my life so simple. It takes care of birthdays, holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas. It takescare of all that nonsense. I don't have to stop and look and make any conditions on whether I'll come and share me with you or not if you want me because I belong to you." You see, you people of Alcoholics Anonymous, you came to me when nobody else would. You came and drug me off the scrap heap of life when everybody else said, get out. I have never forgotten that. I have not forgotten who wanted me when nobody else did. But you see, from the time I embraced your program and became an alcoholic, things have started to happen to me. When I first came to Alcoholics Now, my vocabulary consisted of about four four-letter words. Mother ran all around in there somewhere. Then I had some people who sat me in a room and word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph fed me the English language. They told me things like cussing was a crutch for conversational cripples. Then they backed it up when I rained my wrath on them. And I don't take directions and correction very easy. I attack. but I knew they loved me because when my madness and my insanity subsided we started all over again and anything they ever asked me they'd say to me Johnny what about that program you love called Alcoholics Anonymous I'd say oh yeah what about those people oh yeah you know on the fourth day of June 1961 they opened up the doors of the penitentiary and let me out turned me loose in a world I didn't know anything about the only thing I was armed with was a program of recovery called Alcoholics Anonymous and the only think I wanted to do was go set meetings with you that's all I'd ever lived for that's what I wanted to do I went home to see my mother she fell off step blind drunk I picked her up and put her on the couch said mom I'm going to an AA meeting she said fine I think you should I've learned a tremendous lesson from my little mother I learned that I do not have the power to get anybody sober. I don't have the power to get them drunk either. I don' t even have any power to keep me sober. Where would I get any power? I don''t have any power. I'm powerless. The book Alcoholics Anonymous tells me I only have a daily reprieve. That means I got it right now. That means I get to stay sober today for what I do today. Too many people who get a few years around here get to think they get to stay sober because they've been sober. Boy, that's a fool's paradise. I tell you, Do you ever take a sick thought and put it in a sick mind? Do you think you're going to get a well answer? I get to stay sober. Not what I did 20 years ago. Not for the 12-step call or the institution I went to or the people I sponsored 20 years before. I get sober because I came to Reno this weekend because I was asked to. That's why I get so sober, because I get sit around in meetings and hear you share you with me. What I've been doing all weekend, just sitting around letting you share with me feeling good seeing people I sponsor people I love old friends new friends that's what I get here I get to do that because I get to stay sober today when I get back home tomorrow I get the space over tomorrow because I'll answer them telephones from them people that I sponsored home that's it it's a daily thing I had a tough time with that because I didn't know how to do nothing I had no idea and I had a sponsor who must have went to school for hard-hearted sponsors. His name was Norm Alpey. He's dead now, but God, Norm Alopey. Norm Alapey was the greatest member of Alcoholics Anonymous I've ever known. He's the only member of Alcoholic Anonymous I've never known in my life who never sold out, who never compromised his position or justified his principles. He walked right down the middle of the road. And I had him for 22 years before he died, dropped dead one day. and I never loved him as much alive as I loved him after he was dead I'm sorry to tell you that I always loved him but I don't think I appreciated him as much as I do today well I have a sponsor today I've had a sponsor since a year I have to have a sponsor I'm a very sick man my sponsor Norm made me go to work I said what do you want me to do he said work I said what do you mean he said W-O-R-K work I wanted a position I didn't know how to do anything but I was good at that you ever read the one ad look for old war out domino players my sponsor made me put on my resume star second baseman for the San Quentin Pirates for two years try that on your resume hot shot he said finally got me a job in the oil fields by this time my wife would come back with that little girl I was never supposed to see and she's going to have another one and so I had to find out what people do when they get paid I didn't know so I used to go stand off in the markets and watch them you ever watch what they do they come in there and they got this little kid with them and they throw them in them baskets backwards and run them down the aisle they throw stuff in there and the kid tears packages and does all this stuff and you go up in front of this cash register and he ranks it up and the guy standing there was culturally shocked. Jesus, we don't need all that. You know? So I finally got a paycheck. Finally got my first paycheck and I ran home and I said, let's go to the market. She says, why? And I said that's what they do. She said, who? And I say them. Have you ever tried to explain them to them? Huh? If somebody comes up to you tonight and wants to know who they are, send them to Al-Anon. That's who they are. They're really the reason we're in here if you want to know the truth. She said, we don't need anything. I said, I don't care. We're going to the market. I guess I had one of them looks in my eyes. You know how newcomers got these spiritual looks in their eyes like, we're going to the market, you bitch, or I'm going to kill you. We went to the market. I put the kid in the basket backwards and pushed her down the aisles, up and down the aisle. She threw the groceries in there. I had shock at the cash register. We went home. I asked for some money to get a haircut and somebody stole her purse. You want to hear somebody scream? Listen to a thief when they get stolen from. Well, I ran it and raved and jumped and hollered. And I'll tell you something, if I could have found that guy, you'd have another talker here tonight. I'd be up there in Folsom telling you that AA don't work. You always notice losers say AA don'T work. AA DON'T work? Yes, it does. Works fine. Works well. You know my sponsor wouldn't let me have a car. He made me ride my little girl's bicycle right through my old neighborhood to an AA meeting. Now, you've got to understand, this is a big-time dope dealer who used to run that neighborhood driving by his old customers on a little girl'S bicycle on the way to an A&A meeting. And their comments were like, Oh, that AA really does work, doesn't it, John? So I finally got enough money to buy a car. So I said, Norm? He says, yes. And I says, I'm going to buy you a car and you're going to pay me for it. He says I'm not going to get a car because I can't drive a car without a driver's license. I said yes. Did you have a driver'S license? I said no. He says then you don't get a card. You can't driving a car with a driver. I said what do you mean I can drive a card? I've been driving a car since 1948 without a driver's license. I don't get one until 2060 sometime. I've had a car accident. I've never been banned for life for driving a card. He said, then you won't drive a car as long as you're alive. I said, why? And he said, I don'T want people like you out there running around with people like me out there. I'M A CITIZEN. So finally through a kind parole officer and because I passed a bunch of tests, they gave me a probationary license. So I called him up and I said, I'm going to get a car now. He says, you got the money for a car? And I says, yes. He says you got a driver's license? I says yes. He says he got money for insurance? No? Then you can't have a car then. See how cruel he was? Very simple. He didn't want me out there endangering the lives of decents citizens. I didn't have a right to drive a car just because I wasn't drinking. I don't know what there is about sick people who think they have a right for anything. Sick people like me, who've destroyed and used up everything in their life, think I have a right to anything. Everything I have is a privilege. When I have rights, I have to defend them. I defend them to the death! I don't have any rights. My sponsor taught me that. He taught me to love you. He taught my to respect you. I'll tell you how he did it. He did very cruel, cruel things to me. I didn't know he was doing it. It was very cruel. I used to go to meetings with Norman. I'd sit in meetings with Norm and I'd start to talk to him while the meeting was going and he'd say to me, shut up! He'd yell at me right across the table. Embarrassed me in front of all my friends. I want to get up and go to the bathroom. He said, sit still. One night I was at a meeting and Chuck was talking and sometimes Chuck talked a long time. I had to go tothe bathroom. I said, Norm? He said shut up. I said Norm, I have to goto the bathroom he says shut up and sit still I said I may pee my pants He said so what? One night it was a hot July night Norm was going to pick me up and take me to a meeting and I got all dressed up in my new tank top and my shorts and my thongs and I stood on the corner waiting for my sponsor to come and pick me he drove up and looked at me and drove off you think it's funny I was ready to kill I tell you that I couldn't wait until he got home at 11 o'clock that night his phone rang. Why'd you do that to me? I said. Man, what's wrong with you? Trying to kill me? What's wrong? Why didn't you take me to that meeting so I'm going to ask you a question? I said, what? He said, would you go to church dressed like that? I said no, I wouldn't. He said you ain't going to my church dressed like this. I said I wouldn' t dress like that either. You see I guess he's just trying to teach me to show a little respect for this thing that gave me life. That's all. But I guess if Alcoholics Anonymous never gave you anything, you wouldn't have to respect it. I guess that the people of AlcoholicsAnonymous didn't mean anything to you. You wouldn't be worried about disturbing them during the meeting. I guess you wouldn'T have to worry. You could stumble over them and get up and go to the bathroom and get coffee and talk and visit. I guess If AlcoholicsAnalymous never gave anything, I guess it wouldn't be, if you're only in here for the short haul, I guess there wouldn't been necessary for you to learn everything here. I asked Norma about that one night on the way home from a meeting. I said, Norma, this was years later, I said you know when I was new and Alcoholics Anonymous, how you used to yell at me? How you used make me sit still in the meetings? And he says yes. I said why? I mean, I, I say it's only a call of nature to have to go to the bathroom, Norm. I said I, you know, I'd be real careful and not stumble. Someone asked you a question, Johnny. He says life to the alcoholic is a matter of seconds and inches. seconds and inches. And I said, yeah, I understand. I've heard you say that many times. He's supposing, Johnny, just supposing. What happened to you? What turned you around in alcoholic phenomena? And I says, well, I was sitting in the penitentiary and Les told me I didn't have to live that way anymore. He said, supposing at that instant some inconsiderate selfish ass had stumbled across you on his way to the coffee pot or to a dresser and you'd missed that. I said well, i'd be dead now. You see, now you understand. That's the type of responsibility that you carry in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, Johnny. Because you carry it in meetings of Alcoholic Anonymous people sitting in this room, alcoholics are going to die if they don't hear what they have to hear. And I don't ever know what it is and neither do you. But I wouldn't want to be guilty of that. And you see, there's another thing that I've learned since I've been here I don' t want to miss anything here. I want to sit and listen while they're reading the fifth chapter I study the tradition I know about the concepts I can't learn enough about this thing that gave me life I have to know about it because I want it to be here if my great-great-great grandchildren ever have to come here I want alcoholic synonymous to be there for them just exactly the way it was for me when I got here and if I wanted to change I would be saying to you that alcoholic synonymus never done anything for me Because I hear people from podiums like this say things like, Alcoholics Anonymous is not enough. I can only tell you that anybody who would ever stand at a podium of Alcoholics Anonymous and tell youthat AlcoholicsAnonymous is not enough has never tried Alcoholics Anonymous. Not the way I've tried Alcoholic Anonymous, not the way I see the people who went before me, the Chuck Chamberlains and the Norm Alpeys and the Clancy Emilitons and those type of people. Seemingly, Alcoholics Anonymous had been enough for them they never went anywhere else I stand here before you tonight I've been diagnosed by some of the leading psychiatrists in the world as criminally insane that I am never supposed to be able to live outside of an institution without some type of medication in my system I can't do that and so I think maybe I might be able to speak for the mentally disturbed and yet I have never been anywhere else but Alcoholics Anonymous. I have never embraced any other authority, any other thing, but Alcoholic Anonymous." I'm afraid that if I was to go out and lend my time to anything else, it would water down AlcoholicsAnonymous. If all these people who go searching other things put as much time in here as they do searching, when you go searching, it means you ain't found. That's all. And if you ain'T found what's here, It's because you ain't looked. Chuck used to say, if you could see what it was, it would blind you just like the sun. I never will forget one time I went down to see him. I was like his kid. I spent 25 years with him. He enraptured me, this old man. I was hypnotized by him and I had a problem. I don't know what the problem was, but it was very deep at that time. And I drove all the way down to Laguna and I'm sitting there walking along the beach and I said to him, Papa, I've got to talk to you about this problem. He said, okay, talk to me. We'd talk and talk and he just looked at me and he said, look out there. I looked out there and it was the ocean. I said, okay, I'm looking. He said, how far can you see? And I said how the hell do I know how far I can see? He said seven miles. The old fool's been in the sun too long and he's blew it. Seven miles. I said I learned a lesson in geography. I drove all the way down here, and he told me about geography. About an hour later, we're sitting up in his house up on the hill, and we're looking out at the wind, and He's got a cup of coffee, and He was out of the sun now, so I thought, Now, I'll ask Him again. So I laid this tremendous problem on Him again, whatever it was. He said to me, Look out there. I looked out there, He said, How far can you see? And I said, Seven miles. he said no you don't understand do you and I said seven miles he said from that point to that point is 120 miles huh he says you still don't understand do ya and I say no he says the higher you go the further you see and the further your see the more there is to see and it's unending on and on and on such be it in the mind of my Father God and all things that he created for his children. I can't stand here and tell you that every meal I've eaten since I've been an alcoholic and now it's a banquet. God, I've gone through all kinds of things. My first wife committed suicide. I have a young daughter on drugs. I guess she's off of them now. My mother never quit drinking. I've went through business failures. I've had a very painful divorce after a long period of time. there were all kinds of problems I've had everybody who was near and dear I had to sit and watch that old man that I loved like a father was the only father and watch him die sit there for a year and try to rock him to sleep like he rocked me to sleep watched him die loved him to pieces watched this magnificent man die from this disease not alcoholism and loved him more than anything I've ever known because I saw he was a human being And my sponsor today tells me that the best we ever get here is human beings. That's the best we ever give. That means we're fallible and we all have feet of clay, I suppose. I'll tell you a little story. One night I was coming home from a meeting with Chuck and I'd snuck something off a table to read to him because I needed to say something to him because I felt like such a dork. I didn't know what to say to him. I snuck this thing off and I said, I want to read you this, Papa. And he said, what is it? And I started to read this thing, Why We Were Chosen. He said, hold it. I don't want you to read that to me. I said, why not? He said well in the first place we're not chosen. I said what? He said no, we're nicht chosen. We're not special. He said Johnny, we're all God's kids. All of us are. If I am, you are. And if you are, I am. If you ain't, I ain't. If I ain' t, you ain' te. We're just in a lot of trouble. He said they make the rain to fall on the just as well as the unjust. I said, no. Then I said to him, then how come I'm sober? I know people who are far better people than I'll ever be who aren't sober. My baby daughter is a far better person than I will ever be. My mother is a much better person and yet they can't stay sober. Why is that? He said, well, you've come to understand you're one of God's children and you act like it. And so therefore he treats you like one of his children. He says, they don't know. They don't know that they're one of God's children and they don't knows how to act like one God's child. And so it becomes your business and your only business to stay sober and carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers and you never know who's suffering. You never know who's suffering. I don't. I just go. I just call when I'm asked and I make no conditions on it. the date's open it belongs to you as long as you want me I'm coming because I love Alcoholics Anonymous and I love you it's given me everything I don't know anybody you know I stand here before you tonight I don' t know anybody in the world I trade places with I'm really I can't think of a single thing in this world right now that I actually want that I don''t already have I live where I want to live I do what I want I have a host of friends i just i just love life every day of my life it's a blessing because of you and you know there's a word that's bandied around in alcoholic synonymous all the time about gratitude just an easy word to say some of these people i hear means of alcoholic synonyms so grateful they can't see they they stand at podiums with big tears drinking on your eyes saying i'm so grateful for this program i can't see. They stumble over people getting out the door. They wouldn't pick up a chair or an ashtray if their life depended on it. They're so grateful they can't seek. I don't think gratitude is a word. I think it's something you do. If you don't believe that, go down and order a fine meal at that restaurant. And when that waitress comes up and hands you the check, just get up and thank her and not leave her any gratuity. Then go back and sit at her table ten minutes later and ask for a cup of coffee. Gratitude is an action. I never knew that. When I was about seven years sober, the old lady who carried the message to me, who was like a mother to me, a lady by the name of Myrtle Snyder, who's dead now, was struck with a very serious heart attack in the town of San Bernardino, which is about 80 miles from where I live. And I got an old rattletrap car that don't run half the time and I'm working nights and I finally get this message as I come in off of this ship and I get in this old ratteltrap car and I am driving to San Bernardina to see Myrtle because her son tells me she's going to die and Johnny, she wants to see you. And she loves you so much and so I'm going and I don't know what to say. I'm driving down this old road, highway in this little rattletrapped car. I don't know if it's going to make it or not, and I'm scared, and I don' t know what to do because I love her more than anything I've ever loved in my life, and I d'on't know what I'm going to do when she's gone. I'm gong to try to tell her how I thank her and try to show her how much I love er and everything, and I dont have those words. I don''t have this thing, and when I get there, I go in and sit on er bed, and she's got these tubes hanging out of er nose and stuff and all that machine's attached to er, and I' m sitting here, and she' s in a deep coma, and I''m crying. I don ''t know how to do it. I'' m trying to say, mom I love you how do I thank you what can I do and I'm just bubbling her eyes cleared and she had the prettiest clearest blue eyes you've ever seen in your life when she looked at me and she smiled and she said this to me sweetheart there is only one way in God's world that you can ever express your gratitude in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and that's remained a good example of what this program can do for you you know if there's one prayer I have I hope and pray to God that I always will thank you