Laxatives Anonymous – Johnny H.

hi everybody my name is Johnny Harris and I'm an alcoholic and I guess I like to thank the committee for allowing me the privilege of participating in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting I have always considered it some type of a privilege to be allowed to come in and sit in any meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and to be aloud the privilege sharing my experience strength and hope at a meeting of alcoholics anonymous sometimes boggles my mind because I have never been able to get it through my consciousness and inside of my being that I have any right at all to be an Alcoholics Anonymous. I never did anything prior to coming into Alcoholics Anonymous that would entitle me to live the type of life that I've lived since I've been hanging around AlcoholicsAnonymous. And so I've come to understand very deeply in my life through a series of events and circumstances and being able to look back over almost 29 years of complete sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous, that what I've bee given when I walked him to a program called Alcoholics Anonymous was a gift from God. And I find out that as long as I nurture and take care of and caress and treat this as a gift from God, I'll never have to abuse it or make it dirty. I can keep it beautiful and wholesome like it was intended to be. And as long as I remember that it's a gift from God and not my inherited right to be here, then I think I will always be appreciative of the gift. I would like to really tell you that I'm very glad to be here tonight fully clothed and in my right mind. And I tell you for no particular reason other than the fact that a little over 30 years ago tonight, I crawled around on my knees in a cell in solitary confinement in a maximum security penitentiary barking at the moon. Now because of a loving God who has expressed himself through a program called Alcoholics Anonymous, it's no longer necessary for me to crawl around on my knee like an animal. If I get nothing else out of this deal, I can live with it all the way home. Makes me feel good. I'd like to be able to stand here tonight and tell you without any type of doubt in my mind whatsoever that that's where alcohol and drugs took me to. Oh, I'd love to be a part of that. I'm not going to lie to you. I don't want to be able tell you that. That's where I took me too. The only thing that alcohol and drugs did in my life, they kept me alive long enough to find Alcoholics Anonymous. That saw I'm as sure as I'm standing here tonight without alcohol working in my life, I'd have blown my brains out before I was nine years old. I've always been some type of emotional misfit. I never belonged anywhere. I was angry and hostile and bitter. I don't know where it came from. I just always felt that way. I had this terrible wall of anger inside of me that I just didn't know what to do with. I just felt awful. And I had a lot of reasons, I suppose, to be like that. Everybody in my family were drunk. My mother was a drunk. My father was a drink. I had four drunken uncles, three drunken aunts, and a drunken grandfather. And I said to myself a long time ago, well, no wonder it felt different. I've been born beneath my station. These are bad people. And what they did, they gathered up on Saturday night and they beat each other up. That's what they Did. They drank each other's whiskey and sold each other women. And I guess whoever survived that week was the king. I don't know how they worked it out, but I just don't over that I'd understand that did you I that never confused me She getting drunk and violent and whipping and kicking people never confused Me I can understand that see when you're full of anger and hostility and bitterness when you put your foot into somebody It's almost like a spiritual experience. You know, I just kind of goes all over your real Well, if you make you feel good, you know, maybe I Can understand that what I never was able to understand was how these same people on Wednesdays would throw their arms around one another and say we love one another because we're family and I don't know whether it's true or not but from my earliest recollection of life until the day I came into Alcoholics Anonymous I never uttered the word love in my vocabulary it wasn't in my vocabulary I didn't use it i didn't give it to anybody and the reason i didn t use it is because i'm a user see i'm a user of things and i'm abuser of people and i m a taker and takers and users and people like me are full of selfishness and self-centeredness and gratification never love anybody we use people i use them if i told you i loved you you had an edge and i didn d give anybody an edge but people like me don't give people edges because i'm a user i'm a taker of things and if you've got an edge you can use me so i don't get edges i take edges if you have something that i want i take it if you don't like it that's tough i just take it and when i'm through using you and got everything out of you i can use i'll discard you like so much piece of trash and walk on about my business and never look back and never think about you again until i'm sober and then those faces start to creep up into my head now i didn't know that before i came to alcoholic synonyms i don't know what was wrong with me i knew that my grandmother wasn't like that my grandfather didn't do that my grand mother just sat around in the kitchen while these people are killing each other singing songs to jesus that's what she did she'd just sing songs they'd come flying through the room she just jumped back let him go right i got i'd watch grandma i think god i think i'll be like grandma well i'm not like grandma i'm an alcoholic grandma was an alcoholic grandma loved to suffer alcoholics don't suffer we get over it real quick so i went where my grandmother went i went to my grandmother's church my grandmother church confused me very confusing because i i never figured out one little simple thing when i i went to my grandmother's church wherever i went i went i know that's a little heavy for maryland but try to grasp it best you know how they get this real keen in california because they're sick out there i just you see i took that rotten attitude of mine with me i took that bitterness and that hostility and that arrogance and that anger and that whatever it was i took them that church and i sit down there in the church full of anticipation waiting to hear what i've been wanting to hear all my life before i came here somebody tell me what's wrong with me somebody told me what to do about what's going on with me and a guy stood up for him very much like this on a sunday a long time ago and told me i'm supposed to love and honor and respect my parents he says you're supposed to your brothers and your sisters and i didn't i hated them i hate them for reasons i didn t even understand and god i felt guilty about that And I became frightened to death sitting in that church that people were going to find out I was hating when I was supposed to be loving, and I didn't know what to do about that either. I turned to walk outside the door of the church that day. The old man 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 what that did for my old man, but I haven't been back to church since. And it hasn't got anything to do with church. It's got an awful lot to do with me. That's just the way I felt about it. You see, I said I was never going to drink alcohol either because I lived in an alcoholic home. I lived where people—I lived where two drunks were. I laid there in the middle of the night and listened to the screams and the tearing up and the furniture breaking and the cussing and things that go on in an alcohol home, the flesh hitting flesh and the terrible silence that goes on in those places. And those aren't too bad, but in the night when they're gone, that's the terror. And I got to lay there with my thoughts and think about my uncles who live in penitentiaries and my aunts who work on those houses and my grandfather who burns down barns, my mother who drinks and beats my old man up, my dad who beats my mother up. I think about all those kind of things and I come to a real profound conclusion that they drank alcohol and they did those things. And I'm not going to drink alcohol and I'm going to be like them. I'm gonna be better than they are. I'm goanna step out into that world. I'm gonna have something. I'm goinna do something and I's gonna be something. But one day out of curiosity I just took a drink. It wasn't any big decision on my part. I just got into my old man's blue-legged hooch and took a drink of alcohol. And it was the most fantastic thing that ever happened to me in my life. It went down inside of me, tore all that madness from me, took me from the black pit of nothingness, moved me into the gray fringes of the business of living, and installed in me an arrogance that said, damn you world, it's all right. I'm not good enough to be around the good people, but I'm too good to be among the bad people. It's okay right here. and for the next 20 years of my life i pursued that feeling that feeling into the gates of insanity and death and beyond looking for that feeling not for alcohol because i never liked the taste of alcohol i like what it did for me when it got in here and the consequences were no nothing at all the consequences that i had to pay for the relief that i got i drank alcohol with no big price whatsoever never the consequences of trying to live a life but that madness that engulfed me when i was sober the consequences i had to pay for drinking were no problems at all i took a drink of alcohol and for the next 20 years of my life every time i took a drink about all this is what happened to me i took a drink off the hall and three days later I stood in front of a judge that was sentenced to the Hutchinson State Reform School. Twenty years later, I took a drink of alcohol. They pulled me out of a car in Compton and stood me in front of a Judge and sentenced me to 20 years in the penitentiary. That's what happened to me when I drank alcohol. I got drunk and went places. I traveled around out there. I went from reform school to reform school to junior penitentiares to penitentials to nut houses. Oh, nut houses! Saturday night in the nut houses It's very much like an AA meeting on Saturday night. You've never been to one. They call them treatment centers nowadays, but they were nut houses then and they're nut houses now as far as I'm concerned. They don't put you in there for being well-adjusted, baby, I can tell you that. On Saturday, see, I don't know why it was at this particular point in my life the psychiatric profession was teaching me better living through electricity. And on Saturdays in the Nuthouse, we used to have dinner very much like we had here tonight. Then we had a little therapy, very much like we're having here tonight, and then we had a dance, very much like what we're having here tonight. Ain't a hell of a lot changed in the last 40 years if you really want to know, except I didn't get my electoral shock treatments this morning. But I used to be leaning up against the wall any dance you a dance you go to you know where you lean up against the wall waiting for her to come over there and attack you you know and they treated me that day and i look up and this was quite she came here she comes shuffling across this desk and they treated her that day too so she was in good shape and she'd walk up to me and she engaged in meaningful conversation like And finally, we'd get around to the point that she'd get a word out, ask me what my name was. And I'll tell you what's scary as I stand here before you tonight. I didn't know. The only way I had to know who I was is when I showed her my little armband. I didn't know who I was. I didn' have the slightest idea where I was, they were treating me for an attitude problem. I didn''t know. And you know what separates me tonight from standing here in this magnificent place with you magnificent people? From that little thing cornered against a wall in a nuthouse at a dance. You know what seperates me from that? Just a thought. Just some little thought that may creep into my mind someday as I'm driving down the road No matter how long I've been sober, no matter how active I am in Alcoholics Anonymous, that little thought that may come into my mind someday, I'm different. I really don't have to do this stuff anymore. I've Been Sober for all this. Let somebody else do it. I don't need to go to meetings and have a sponsor and read the book and go to do these things that they ask me to do anymore. My case is different. That's all I would have to be able to do. do is to think that my case is different and i really don't have to do this anymore and the next thing i know i'll be standing if i live long enough i'll be standing over against a corner somewhere with my brains scrambled trying to remember who i was well i was a long way for that as i was sitting on a furlough from a reform school when i was 10 or 11 years old and alcohol quit working in my life i was sitting on this furloughing from this reform school i drank a gallon of wine and nothing was working. I was frightened to death and the guy handed me some pills and said, take these. I didn't remember saying to him, what are those? You don't think they'll bother me if I take them, do you? I just, thank God they weren't ex-lax. We could start a whole new 12-step program called Laxatives Anonymous. No, I could be here tonight telling you I'm an adult child of a laxative taker I would have been functional but mom was on the toilet all the time when I was a child that's about as bizarre some of this stuff you hear around here anymore I just I drank the alcohol how about that I don't remember my mother holding me down saying drink this you little bastard i drank it and it worked that's why i'm an alcoholic i drank alcohol and it worked and when alcohol quit working in my life it cared and terrified me and a guy stuck some pills in my hand and i ate them i didn't care what it was i ate him they worked and sitting on a thrill from reform school not long after that 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 armor and out of institutions that's what i did i lived out in them streets where people like me live i did what people like me do in them streets i used up every single thing that came in contact with me only looking for one simple thing in my life to get this madness off of me to try to be sober i don't want to be this way anymore i can't stand the nightmare and so when they come along and arrested me i just went off and rested somewhere for a while in 1951 in 1952 i'm riding the crest of everything i thought was it i had everything i I thought a man was supposed to have in 1950. I had a big apartment building and a closet full of $300 suits. I lived on the top floor. I had big automobile parks in the garage. I had people coming around all hours of the night. And they're begging me for favors, and everything seems to be working real well, only I can't leave the apartment because every time I leave the department, the police jump on me and take me to jail. And I'm riding around in old beat-up pickup trucks, and I'm asking myself questions about people who are riding them. What's wrong with me? I don't know what's the matter with me. I'm asking myself questions. Good God, what's the matter with me? I don't know. I don' t want to be this way, but I am this way. I don''t know what's a matter with m. I got everything and yet I got nothing. I want to know why I can't be like my brother. Why I can''t just go to work and have a wife and a couple of kids like my Brother does. What's the manner with me?" And you see, when you run out of people, places, things, circumstances and conditions to blame for your dilemma, a person like me needs something to blame instead of looking at myself. I can' t stand to look at me. I know what kind of a scumbag I am. I can't stand to look at me, so I have to look out. And when I run out of people, places, things, circumstances, and conditions, I can blame God for it. He doesn't talk back. It's God's fault. He doesn'T like me. If you listen real careful in A, you can hear that all the time. I guess if God wants me to have a job, he'll shoot it down here to the club. next time you get hungry you go lock yourself up in a closet and pray for a hot dog if God squirts you through the keyhole, you call me I'll tell you I've been sober and alcoholic and ominous for a long long time there's only one thing I've learned about God since I've Been Here and I know this to be a fact that God will not do anything for me that i can do for myself nothing he won't do anything for you that you can do for yourself either there's only been one single thing in my entire life i have never been able to do one thing i wasn't able to do it before i came to alcoholics anonymous i'm not able to do it tonight i won't be able to go from this day forward no matter how long i live of myself and by myself i cannot keep from taking a drink of alcohol i can't do that and yet here i stand before you almost 29 years without any type of chemicals in my system and what blows my mind even more than anything else from the first moment i saw you to this instant i haven't had a conscious thought or a conscious desire to put any of that in my systems and that doesn't make me wonderful my god seems to understand that i cannot actually harbor a thought in my head for over 30 seconds without putting it into action he seems to know how sick i am so that action does not have to to come into my head. It's just a really amazing thing to me. In 1951, I'm on my way to the penitentiary and my mother stood at the visiting screen of the Los Angeles County Jail and called me a murderer. My 17-year-old brother had gotten into some of my poison, took an overdose of it and died. My baby brother was the only thing in God's world that I cared anything about. I had to stand handcuffed between two detectives three days later while they buried the only thing in the world I care anything about, and I got all the guilt and shame and humiliation and degradation of a lifetime hanging around me, and I've likely been able to cry, but I didn't know how. I didn' t have the simple gift of tears that God gives every creature that's born on the face of this earth, and the reason I didn''t have them is because I didn ''t think they were necessary. I went on to the penitentiary and stayed there 4 1⁄2 years. I came out there 4 2⁄3 years sicker than I was when I went in there. I spent the next couple of years of my life trying to prove what a psychiatrist at 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. I told him, not me. I'm different. I'm difference. I come lost now in that institution, bounty trimming. I had that deal beaten six months later. I'm right in the nuthouse kicking and screaming. And that's when I made my round to some of the better laughing academies in the world interviewing psychiatrists. I used to sit there and talk to them with my wraparound overcoat on. We engaged in meaningful conversations. They talked to me about my mother. I talked to them about their mother. and they that's when they introduced me to better living through electricity said i had a bad attitude you'd have a bad attitude too if they did that to you for no reason do you know what they told me when i was a kid in the hutchinson state reform school you know What the counselor told me there they said john if you didn't drink you'd be all right how about that you know they told me in juvenile hall in los angeles when i was 10 years old johnny if you didn't drink you'd be all right you know what they told me in the junior reform school when i 12 or 13 years old johnny you didn t drink these things and swallow these things to smoke these things shoot these things you'd be all you know they told my psychiatrist when i was 19 years old Johnny you didn d drink these things to swallow these things to smoke these things shoot these things you'd be all right do you know what the psychiatrist told me in Fort Worth Texas in 1957 1958 Johnny if you didn't drink these things and follow these things that smoke these things shoot this thing should be alright either what none of them ever seemed to take into consideration every time they told me that I was as physically sober as i am tonight as physically sober how many times i want to scream out and say good god don't you understand because they don't understand don't you understand i'm nothing i am nothing i came from nothing i am nothing I'm going to be nothing i'm always nothing i put something in me i'm almost to a nothing almost is top of the world here's a guy trying to tell me a nothing that the thing i injected to my system to make me an almost is a problem when i know the problem is i'm nothing it's like trying to kill the guy the building fell down because the elevator was defective doesn't make any sense then and it doesn't making sense now because i'm an alcoholic and my problem is not alcohol, my problem is sobriety. My problem with sobriery today the same it has been my entire lifetime. I cannot stand to be sober and yet I am sober so something miraculous has happened to me in my life but when I walked out of that nut house in Fort Worth, Texas and got on that Greyhound bus and go back to Los Angeles there wasn't any miracles in my line I came back to Los Angeles to kill myself. And a little over 30 years ago, they strapped me down on the bed in the Los Angeles County Jail more dead than alive. I weighed 128 pounds and I was yelling at the doctor who stood in my bed and told me he was going to die. He said, son, you're going to Die and nothing I can do for you. He left. He went all day past and all night past. He come wandering back into my room the next morning and looked down where I was sitting and said, son, You're going To Die and Nothing We Can Do For You. And I said, okay. the third day came into my room i had a terror grip me that i've never known before since in my entire lifetime the idea came to me that was going to live and not die is going to get up out of that bed go to the penitentiary and come back out and start that rat race all over again and god knows i didn't want to do that i laid in that bed 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 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 because there was no blinding flashes of light. Nobody come running down the hall with a dozen donuts saying we got an AA meeting down there. And none of those things ever happened to me. I just went to sleep for a little while and I don't know how many have ever kicked a two-year heroin habit but that's what I was doing. That's the first time I'd been asleep in a long time. I'll tell you how sick I was. just two weeks, two short weeks after I screamed out that prayer in my deathbed. I'm up running around in jail looking for some more of the poison to put me back in a bed I'd just gotten off of. In the back of my mind where my problem seems to be centered, in the back OF MY MIND I KNEW THAT ONCE UPON A TIME WHERE I COULD NOT STAND IT ANY LONGER could ingest something into my system and it was okay right now and that's what I wanted right now I want to be all right I want it off of me now and even though it wasn't working and I knew it wasn t working I knew it would if I could just find the right combination of things I stood in front of a superior court judge who would call the blood-sucking parasite at society told her I didn't have any right to being around decent people. Told the woman who was sitting in the courtroom carrying my child she cared anything at all about her child that I'd never be allowed to lay eyes on it. And the man didn't say anything about me that I didn' know. Nothing at all. See, I've always known what I was. Nobody has ever been able to erase that memory from me. Nobody has every been able judge me as harshly as I judge myself. I I'd judge me and sentence me to death. I know what I am. Nobody has to judge me. Nobody has ever had to judge me. Nobody has never judged me as harshly as I've judged myself. Ever. But the evidence of that man's statement was so damning, it's the first time I'd ever heard it. I ran off and spent the next nine months of my life locked up in solitary confinement, crawling around on a concrete floor in a six-by-eight room in a pair of long-handled underwear barking at the moon, completely and totally insane. And on the first Sunday in November 1959, I wandered into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't take any credit for coming to Alcoholics Anonymous because if I'd have known where I was coming, I wouldn't even have come. I wasn't an alcoholic. I just wasn't alcoholic. I didn't know what one was, but I wasn' t one. I came to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous becaus e the institution I was in let women come in there. I came to my first meeting of alcoholics and I was almost 29 years ago to smell perfume and I've been honking and sniffing around here ever since you gotta really be careful what gets us sick people in here I'll tell you that open up the doors we're coming in I'm telling you that I remember moving in and sitting 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 cause I was cool if I'd have been any cooler when I got here I'd have probably froze to death, for God's sake. I remember looking up on the backboard of a SOTU brigade 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. But then GangstersAnonymous or OverhipAnonymous or Doo-Doo'sAnonymous or something, I didn' t want to be an alcoholic. I didn''t know what one was, but I didn ''t want to be one. So I thought, well, I'll wait for these women to get up and tell their racy stories. I knew about women drunks. And these old gals got up to talk. And I get a kick out of this sometime because when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, there weren't very many pretty young ladies like my wife in AlcoholicsAnonymous. And These Old Gals Got Up To Talk And They Said they drank for a long time. You could look at them and know they'd been somewhere for a long time I mean they didn't have to tell you they drank you knew they drank they said I drank I'll bet you did mama bad stuff too but there was something about these people something about them and I find that in the people of Alcoholics Anonymous who out there giving a little just for the hell of giving it i find that here in alcoholics anonymous it's not standard issue for everybody walks in the door it's only for those who are willing to give a little for the hella given it who considered a privilege to be able to come in here and give a level for the heli given it these people had a twinkle in her eye and a smile on their face they really did something i didn't understand and right away they ruined when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous they talked to me about God and when I came here and you talk to me, about God I got up and ran out the room because God was the reason I was. It wasn't my fault. I was at a meeting not long ago and the guy said to me he said Johnny are you going to talk about God? And I said yes I am. He says you know you talk about god you may run people out of Alcoholics Anonymous and I said to him well if God will run them out of alcoholics synonymous, whiskey will run their rusty ass back in here. That's the truth. God is the reason I am, is my being, is the reason I'm sober. I came back to the meetings because I've seen the people. That's why I come to Alcoholics Anonymous, to see these people. Because to me, the people are the magic. There's magic in the people there's magic in the power that keeps you here and that's why i came back you kept talking about god i kept leaving but i kept coming back to see you now one day i said in a meeting of alcoholics anonymous on a sunday a long time ago and little man than i do did 23 fat years in the penitentiary stood at the podium very much like this and told me something i've been waiting all my life for somebody to tell me he told me that i didn't have to live that way anymore if i didn'T want to he says you don't have to do it like this no more and after the meeting I went up to him and said how do you learn how to live that's all I wanted to know he told me about a book called Alcoholics Anonymous as you go get that book I'll go home and pray that you find some part of you in it I guess he prayed real hard that little fella because I've been a student of the book Alcoholics Anonymous 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 the society's I'm looking for a way to live peacefully and comfortably and joyously with me and the loving God that made me There's a strange phenomena that takes place in my life a strange one. 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 comfortable and the joyous I live with me in the loving god that made me oh i had a lot of trouble when i came to alcoholics anonymous you're going to have trouble when you come to alcoholic synonymous if you're not an alcoholic i just had trouble i sit in alcoholics and i was meeting nobody in my life before or since has ever confused me as much as you did when i became here i said in your meetings of alcoholics anonymous and i'd sit back in the back row and i hear people get up at podiums very much like this and say trouble i sit in alcoholic synonymous meetings and nobody in my life before or since has ever confused me as much as you did when i came here i sit at your meetings of alcoholics anonymous and i'd sit back in the back row and i hear people get up at podiums very much like this and saying i used to drink now i don't drink anymore and everything is wonderful i'd say i guess i'm not an alcoholic then i'm not drinking either and i'm crazy so god i wish i was an alcoholic i used to say if i could just be an alcoholic god i don't know what's the matter with me and then i'd hear you say you got to get active in alcoholics and i got active i got up and run around like a chicken with my head cut off i picked up ashtrays and poured coffee and smiled at people wonderful here I went back and sit back there an inventory point and died I was doing everything they told me to do and I'm still crazy everything I'm running around and being busy I'm not drinking and I've not so I says the logical explanation isn't it I'm not calling see if I was an alcoholic all I'd have to do is pick up ashtrays and not drink you got a drinking problem that's true if you're an alcoholic that ain't it and I'm an alcoholic so every time I said to somebody what is it oh it's in the book what's in the book oh it's there and you know the people of Alcoholics Anonymous that you know if you're if your selfish and self-centered and self serving yourself seeking and all you're thinking about is yourself you hear things in a I heard things like when you come to Alcoholics synonymous, people start to recognize the changes in you. I'm getting ready to go to the parole board and I want some changes recognized. Ten days before I got ready to go to the parole boards they called me in front of a man and gave me a letter from a judge and said that my wife was divorcing me and taking my infant child back east and I'd never be allowed to lay eyes on her. Ten days later I went in front a parole board they told me I couldn't go home. And the following sunday i went to a meeting of alcoholics anonymous to denounce you in front of my fellow convicts i never got to the podium that day i sit in the front row and forbidden role with these people and i held an old lady's hand by the name of myrtle snyder and she told me over and over and again honey there has to be a reasoning for everything that happens to you in this lifetime and what she told me wasn't really important it was the way i felt when she held my hand you see she held my hand that day in this penitentiary a long long time ago and i knew that everything was going to be all right i knew there nobody had to tell me that i didn't read it i didn t discover it i knew everything was gonna be alright as long as i held her hand i also knew that the minute i let go of it something was going to happen and what happened to me the minute i let go of her hand i became full of selfishness and self-centeredness again and as she walked out the door that day i looked into her eyes and i said what was it this thing she looked at me and she smiled and she said honey the answer to any question you may ever have in your lifetime lies between the covers of the book called alcoholic synonymous and she left and i went between the covers of the book called alcoholics anonymous to find this simple thing that i felt when this old lady held my hand in the penitentiary a long long time ago and somewhere sitting in a room with a man in his penitentary sometime later i had just been three and a half hours with him telling me about every rotten filthy crucible thing that i'd ever done and i heard myself admit to this man that i was an alcoholic i don't know where it came from it came from way down deep inside of me somewhere and with this it seemed like somebody just pulled all that madness from me because there was a freedom inside of me that day that i care with me to this very instance you see because as i stand before you tonight i know what's wrong with me i never knew before i came to alcoholics anonymous and before i entered into a fourth and fifth step i never know what was wrong with me i thought i was crazy i didn't know i suffered from a disease called alcoholism i didn't know it was a of a two-fold nature an allergy of the body coupled with an obsession of the mind i didn'd know that i wasn't bodily and mentally different from my fellows i didn' know that. i didn know the delusion that i was going to be like other people or presently maybe had to be smashed. i did' know tha.t i just thought i was unique. i din' know that. I didn' thought this was the problem. i thought that was the problem. I did' knew that i wa an alcoholic. i though an alcoholic was somebody who drank all the time i didn't know that an alcoholic was somebody who gets something out of alcohol that everybody who drinks it doesn't get i didn t know that i didn' t know that alcohol for me was an answer i didn know that is for an alcoholic alcohol is the answer it's not the answer it's an answer and i've had to have an answer all my life and sitting in this room with this man i heard myself make this terrible admission to him you see before that i was an alcoholic and something i was a convict and something i was uh convict ended on this and it's a young person and this and this and you know when i was in and something couldn't have this program because i was different than you i didn't have to do what you had to do i didn t have to surrender i didn' t have to work these steps i didn'd have to carry the message i didn''t have to do the things you do i'd have to make a restitution i'd had to do all the stuff you did because i'm different i'm and uh when i became an alcoholic just like you that didn't make me better than or less than that means if you had to do something to stay sober so do i because that's what these people did that's with these people who wrote this book they did these things they stayed sober they were alcoholics if i'm an alcoholic i got to do that i ain't got no way to beat this rat if you're an alcoholic like i'm an alcoholic you're going to have to do it too there ain't no way to beat it not because i'm any special kind of a person i'm an alcoholic i must do this or else my disease will kill me and my disease kills 95 of the people who have today i just figure out that if i stay within their solution and do not dwell too much into the problem then i have a chance to live a long sober life and do the one thing that people like me are trying to do i'm trying to die the old man that i used to love so much or still love so much he was like a father who said that he's just trying to wipe out his record i think that's what i'm doing i owe so much you see because i've been given so much i owe very very much because i'd been given too very much and i guess if i didn't know anything if i wasn't given anything i wouldn't owe anything so i wouldn t need to be grateful to you i would need to do and try to feel like you and want to be like you and sit in and be with you and feel your warmth and your caring and your love if you had never given me anything i wouldn't have to do anything you did but you've given me so much and i didn't know what you were giving me i only know that when i walked out that man's office that day i heard the birds singing for the first time in my life i only know that people came into my life after that time and started to be more concerned about saving my life than they were about hurting my feelings when i came into alcoholics anonymous my vocabulary consisted of about four or four letter words mother ran all around in there somewhere people told me things like custom was a crutch for conversational cripples they were more concerned with saving my life and they weren't hurting my feelings they say we don't say it that way johnny we say it this way so word by word sentence by sentence paragraph by paragraph you fed me the english language you know on the 4th of june 1961 they opened up the doors of the penitentiary let me out to a world i didn't know anything about the world that i'd never functioned in had never been able to function in in my entire lifetime without an edge never frightened to death but I was not frightened when I walked out of that penitentiary and the reason I wasn't frightened when i walked out at penitentiary is because something that happened to me in that penitenciary something that happened to me him there see I knew what I wanted to do I knew where I want to be I want to be with you I only live with one dream for a year and a half that you would come and let me sit in your meeting just let me come and sit there that's all I don't want to do nothing I don' t want to be nothing I just want to be able to sit with you and feel your warmth and know because hear him say that's on so there was no fear of that I got in the fear when I came out I came out of the penitentiary I went home to see my mother I moved in with my mother my mother fell off the steps blind drunk when I got home I picked her up and put her on a couch says mom I'm going to an AA meeting she said fine I think you shit. I'd love to be able to stand here tonight and tell you my mother's sober. Last week, I was in Norman, Oklahoma, and I got a phone call. And my mother was over drunk beating up her neighbors. She's only 83, so she's about that tall, and she weighs about 89 pounds. She drinks whiskey out of a bottle, half pints, because alcoholics drink them out of pints. but when my mother's sober she comes to meetings when my mother's sober she goes to a meeting but my mother like so many people other than my mother my own daughter for one and my mother did not find it necessary to do what people like me have to do in Alcoholics Anonymous they don't find it necessary to fulfill the conditions of this program of recovery in their lives and to try to carry this message to the alcoholic would still suffer they don't seem to find unnecessary they feel like a lot of people i suppose they've got theirs it's yours i don't know but my mother can't stay sober neither can my daughter and that's the only thing to do which i learned a great lesson from my mother and my daughter i learned i don'T HAVE THE POWER TO GET ANYBODY SOBER i DON'T HAVE the power to get them drunk either i DONT HAVE ANY POWER to keep me sober where would i get any power i didn't come alcoholics anonymous with any power and i don't have any power i am powerless i don t have i got a daily reprieve i've got right now this thing i lived all my life for this thing that i ingested all these chemicals into my life force to be able to live comfortably right now i live comfortably right now. This is all I got. I can't even guarantee you I'm going to get back to my room tonight and i can't guarantee you that but i do know that if i get back to my room tonight i'll thank god that i was able to be with you tonight i can tell you that and i was given another day of sobriety to live in this world and try to the best of my ability to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers because that's my primary purpose in life i don't have any other purposes i just don't i've had a lot of problems since i've been sober not many few i've been through most everything that a human being can go through sober i had a wife commit suicide when i was five years sober i was ready to leave alcoholics anonymous when i was six years sober not to get drunk just to leave alcoholic not but my sponsor rescued me that night and put his arms around me told me that god loved me a great deal it seemed like at every time that i've been in need an alcoholic synonymous when i become full of selfishness and self-centeredness and full of myself i've showed up in a meeting of alcoholics anonymous and somebody's put their arms around me and told me to god love me my sponsor told me that night i didn't feel like god loved me that night and i told him so he says yeah johnny he never gives us any more we can handle on those who got the biggest load surely gotta be the blessed i promptly told my sponsor that night that i didn't want to be blessed anymore and bless me i told him he said yeah i remember this buster he gives the big crosses the big horses he gives a little crosses to guys named john people tell me mark i went home that night in that little dungeon that i lived in and i got on my knees somewhere i hadn't been for a long long time because you know when you get pretty big you don't really need to pray you know i mean you pray in the car and the way to work you know but they're not playing the song you want to hear you know during the commercials you can say help i went down somewhere everywhere i got on my knees and i prayed to this god that i didn't understand that night and the god who was not taking away the pain or the anguish or the guilt and i felt that moment somehow i was able to make it through there and i got up off my knees at night i started walking towards the sunshine and i've been walking towards it ever since from time to time i drift off into the path of darkness and selfishness and self-centeredness the only problems i've had since i've been sober and alcoholic anonymous is when i become selfish and self centered and self serving When I get to worrying about what I'm getting, what I am not getting, who is this and what's going on, I get in a lot of trouble that way. That's why it's necessary for me to have a sponsor. That's what it's necessarily for me to have the sponsor that I keep in constant contact with because I can't trust my own judgment. A guy asked me the other day, he said, do you meditate? And I said, no. He said, why not? And I was like, I don't like to associate with lower companions. Me, you give me 15 minutes alone to think about me and I'll think about me and never anything right but what I ain't getting I don't know how you feel about it but I could always use a little more that's where selfish people think but I'll tell you in the 29 years I've been hanging around with you there's only been moments bleeding moments in my life for the pain has been so severe and I was so full of selfishness and self-centeredness that I wanted to break run to find something else and i'll tell you something i hear people from time to time from these podiums of alcoholics anonymous telling they think like alcoholic synonymous was not enough for me i'm going to tell you this if anybody would ever get at the podium of alcoholic synonyms and tell you that alcoholic synonym is not enough they've never tried alcoholics non-human they may have tried something else ann but they have never tried alcoholic synon Because as I stand before you tonight, in a closed file in Sacramento, California, the capital of the state I live in, there are papers in a close file that says that I am criminally insane. There are papers, in that closed file, that says I will never be allowed to function in the world as a normal human being. There are paper that say that I will ever be allowed around human beings without attacking them and doing the things that i do that i will die in an institution somewhere now that may be true i don't know i can't predict the future but i can tell you this that for over 29 years of my life nobody has ever called me criminally insane i have never had to attack anybody for my own selfishness i have not had to do anything like that and the only therapy that has been injected in my life from the time i was born to this minute is a program called alcoholic synonymous nothing else i don't go anywhere else do anything else or investigate anything else i have found exactly what i looked for and thought i found when i took my first drink i have founded exactly what i thought it was when i stuck that needle in mom for the first time i have found exactly what i was thirsty for and hunting for from my various earlier recollection in life i have my place on earth i found my heaven on earth if heaven when i die and go there don't have people like you and that i don't want to go there i wouldn't want to go what would i want to do therefore if you're not there it's not flowers and 30 things and people like my papa and my old sponsor and all those people i don't think i'd want to even be and you know my uh my papa used to talk to me a lot about surrender so you gotta surrender he said to me and i said i did i just didn't i surrender on my death bed he said yes i said then how come i got loaded two weeks later because you got to keep surrendering he got to do it every day you got to get up every day and give yourself away he was a great source of information to me what he's taught me so very very much he's caught me that we're just one among many here and i'll call it none i remember one night i was going away from a meeting with him when i'm riding down the street and i wanted to read him this profound statement that i had picked up at the literature table you know when you knew you go over and find profound statements at the literature table to boggle these old-timers minds with listen to this popeye said why we were chosen he said no we ain't hold it if you read that to me i don't believe that it says it says right here he said that's not true tremendous improvement in your emotions what do you mean you say we're all god's kids all of us are if i am you are if you are i am we're all god children he says he makes the rain fall on the just as well as the unjust doesn't he see if you're smart i said to him how come i'm sober then i know people who are far better people than i will ever be who aren't sober who'll never be sober who died drunk how come i'm sober if i'm not chosen he said that's very simple you've come to believe that you're one of god's children and they don't know that yet and if you don't go tell them they're never going to know it so it's become my business and my only business from that moment to this moment to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers because i don't have any other message i don t know who suffers you see because i'm not special i'm just one of god's children and when i started to act like one of God s children he treated me like one of gods children now as a guy like me learned to act like one god s children i tell you i started act like his children act you i started to walk the way my sponsor walked i started acting the way that my sponsor acted i started to dress the way my sponsor dressed i started to clean up my language i started to act like one of god's children i did not take god's name in vain i did not make some mockery out of alcoholic synonymous i was grateful that god had come into my life and alcoholics anonymous and i started to act like it because i started to act like you that's the way you acted oh i'm so grateful for the people who went before me that i just sometimes that i just sit back and and just want to cry they're practically all gone now all my uh all my support systems left me my sponsor died after 22 years myrtle died in my seventh year my papa died a couple of three years ago and i had to watch him die and you know i really uh i was sitting down talking to my sponsor about it the other day And I said to him, God, where are all the old-timers, Clancy? He said, we're it, kid. We're it. And so I guess the great legacy that they passed on to me is this, that I must do what they did. I must act as they acted. I must believe as they believed. And even though I don't believe sometimes, I must ask as though I believe as if they believe. I have to believe that we're all God's children. And if I didn't believe that, if I Didn't Believe We Were All God's Children, then I wouldn't be around to believe in any of the songs. I believe that I have to act that way. I believe you believe that I'm the only copy of the big book Alcoholics Anonymous anybody ever sees. And I know there's times in my life when I don't want anybody to know that because I'm a human being and sometimes I don' t act like I'm one of God's children. But I can tell you this. a guy gave me a little statement that i love i want to share it with you because i love it so much it's the greatest piece of truth that i ever known now the ironic thing about this statement is that the guy that gave me the statement was nine years sober when he gave it to me a few years ago he is now standing up in meetings as a newcomer somewhere because he forgot the statement and then the ironic thing about that is that the guy that I loved very much knew that I love this statement so he had a plaque made of it and I hang it over the wall in my apartment it's the last thing I see when Lee and the ironic think about that isn't the minute the guy gave me the statement or surely after he made the plaque he left alcoholics anonymous to go find something better well I guess he didn't find it because he started to come back not long ago but there ain't nothing better here's the statement if you keep doing what you're doing you're going to keep getting what you get me I knew that in California go over but I thought you might miss that it was a little too deep for you that means what it says there isn't any hidden psychological evaluation just like our program I'll call it song it's so simple some people think it doesn't mean anything that means exactly what it says if you're sitting in this meeting or this gathering of alcoholics anonymous tonight and there's some football in your gut or some hole in your good and you're restless and you're irritable a discontent and you don't like what's going on and blah blah blah keep on doing what you're doing you're gonna keep on getting what you get Papa used to tell me this Papa used to say to me, son, you can't think your way into right living. You've got to live your way into right thinking. If you sit in this meeting tonight and there's peace in your heart and some joy in your being and you're right where you want to be doing what you want to do and you wouldn't trade places with anybody else who lives upon the face of this earth, then keep on doing what they're doing. You're surely going to keep on getting what you're getting. I don't know about another living soul who lives upon the face of this earth. I don't live inside of anybody else's skin. I can only tell you that for me, and only for me, I'm going to keep on doing what I've been doing because I sure do like what I have been getting. Thank you. Thank you. thank you so much got a message a little late but better late than never lights on a ford escort wax 495 is the tag number hurry out to your car we're going to have the benediction by father francis and then we'll close in the usual way will you please stand Our higher power, in thanksgiving for the AA and Al-Anon programs, tonight we promise to be loyal in our attendance at meetings. We promise to be generous in giving our time and talents to help the alcoholic and non-alcoholic who hurt because of alcoholism. Tonight we will be creative in our suggestions for both programs. Tonight we'll be loving in our attitudes to all we meet in the program or outside the program. Tonight we shall give AA and Al-Anon our interest, our enthusiasm, our devotion, and most of all ourselves. And to prove our sincerity that we mean what we have just said, in the name of AA and Al-Anon, let us say in unison the beautiful prayer that has become part and parcel of our life by saying, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. Keep coming back. Amen.