A Doctor’s Opinion on the Truth and the False – Johnny H.

Hi, everybody. My name is Johnny, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Johnny. And I'm just tickled to death to be here. I can't think of any place in the world that I'd rather be than in a meeting of alcoholics and alcoholics. And you know, one of the most tremendous things in my life today is that I can come all the way from my home in California with my wife and come all the way up to a place like Oregon and come in here and fit. Man, that's the greatest thing in life to me, is finally having some place to fit into. Because before I came to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I was a misfit. I never fit anywhere. I was the type of guy who always stood outside at the candy store looking through the window, wishing that he'd had part of this deal but somehow knew that he could never be a part of anything. anything. I never even felt part of my family, and I felt this way all my life. As far back as I could ever possibly remember, I always felt that I was a part from and never a part of nothing. I had a fairly average family. I came from a little town in Kansas. I I had a drunken mother, a dranken father, four drunken uncles, three drunken aunts and a draken grandfather. And I'd like to tell you that's the reason I'm an alcoholic, but that's not true. I was also the middle boy of three boys, and it seemed like my mother liked my baby brother and my father liked my older brother, and nobody ever seemed to have time for me. But somewhere down inside of all this mess, I always had an idea or a thought or some some kind of a dream or an illusion that there had to be more to life than what I saw. And I looked for it everywhere. When I was a youngster, I used to go to church with my grandmother. And we'd sit in the church on Sunday and the man who is the epitome of authority would stand there and say, You're supposed to love and honor and respect your parents. And I'd sit there and I think about this, and we'd turn around and walk outside of the church and my mother and father would be sitting there drunk and hungover. And the old man would reach out and tap me on the head and say Son, if you continue to you go to church, you're going to grow up to be just like me. If there was anything I didn't want to be, it was my old man because I hated him. I hated Him because He never did for me what I thought He was supposed to do for me. I hate Him because he liked my older brother better than He did me. And I hated my older mother because she liked my little brother. And I hated the whole batch of them because I didn' t understand them and I didn didn't feel a part of them, and they didn't make me feel like I was a part of them. And I didn't understand this. And I would sit in church and people who were supposed to know what you're talking about telling me I'm supposed to love these people. And i don't love them. I hate them. And I'm scared to death and feeling guilty about this business because I'm afraid they're going to find out how I feel here. And that used to drive me nuts. I didn' t know what to do about it. I just became confused and scared to dead because I was afraid they were going to find us that I hated when I was supposed to be loving. And I was always afraid it was going to show on me. I did not know what to do about it and way down inside of me i knew now this isn't all there is to life but it was eating me up and i didn't even know it and i hear all kinds of things and they confused me and i didn't understand it when i was a kid i used to hear my grandmother say god punishes little boys who were bad and i remember sitting alone in this little shack that we lived in and i was scared and i was cold and i wasn't hungry and i don't know where my parents were and i said to myself i wonder why god's punishing me i haven't done anything and somewhere along the line i kind of got the idea that God didn't like me too much. And if he didn't like me, I wasn't going to like him. And being the type of kid that I was, scared to death and confused and hating everything and not being a part of everything and living with that tremendous shame you know, and not feeling nothing and being scared to Death and not knowing which way to go and being guilty about being scared about what I didn't know but being this confused, I didn' t know what to do about it. And one day I got into my old man's bootleg hoochie and took a drink drink alcohol. And a fantastic thing happened. That madness inside of me went away, and the knot and the fear and the anxiety and the confusion and the guilt and all the things I didn't understand evaporated into this nectar of the God that had been descended upon me. And if I'd have had any kind of an inkling that I was an alcoholic, I would have never taken another drink of alcohol as long as I lived, because I triggered a pattern for drinking that I followed for the next twenty years of my life. And it never varied. It was always the same thing. I took a drink of alchohol and three days later they pulled me out from underneath the bridge where I'd been drunk and stood me in front of a judge and sent me to the Hutchinson State Reform School. I was in that school a little while and my mother came and took me out of there and brought me to California. On the way to California she said, when we get to California kid things are going to be different and I looked around and I counted noses and being as smart as I was I counted my mother and my two brothers and me and I figured when we get to California it's automatically got to be better we're leaving that drunken old man in Kansas we left our one-room shack in Kansas and came to California and got us a one-room shack with a bathroom my mother got me a couple of new uncles introduced them to me and I went out on the street corner and got drunk and I made a fantastic discovery I found out that alcohol did the same thing in California that it did in Kansas and in my way of thinking and in the way I see it today it's the only thing that I'd ever found in my life that ever did the samething twice in succession the way i thought it was supposed to do i didn't know it then but i know it now people at this particular time in my life i wanted nothing to do with because i was tired of them telling me things that didn't come true but i knew when i put this elector of the god inside of me that it never lied to me i knew what was going to happen when i twisted this thing and it went down there and got inside of here the madness disappeared and i didn t get scared and i wasn't guilty about nothing and I just went at it until I didn't feel anything and I got drunk and I ended up in juvenile hall and I was there a couple of weeks and my mother came to visit me and she said something strange she said I love you and I miss you and when you come home things are going to be different and I went back and I sat down and I thought about that and two weeks later we went in front of a judge and he sent me to the Whittier State Reform School and my mom stood up with her lawyer and appealed it. And I went back to juvenile hall, and I sat there for a little while, and my mother come to visit me, and she said the same thing. And two weeks later, we went in front of a judge, and he sentenced me to the Whittier State Reform School, and My mother appealed it. Three and a half years later, We're still going to court, my mother, her lawyer, and I. The judge is sentencing. My mother's appealing. My gang had been in and out two or three times, and I hadn't even got started yet. But it was all right, because somewhere along the line I started to create and build a dream or an image that I didn't understand. And you know, I don't think that anybody who has ever lived upon the face of this earth doesn't have a picture in their mind of what they want their mother or their father to be. Now I always had one in mind. I always wanted my mommy to be standing there in that crispy apron with that tray full of cookies and that milk, wishing me when I came in with my little little friends, I'd be standing there hanging on to my mommy's knee and saying, this is my mother. And because she couldn't do this, and because she was afflicted with an illness that I didn't understand, I hated her for it. Because she didn't do all the things that I thought she was supposed to do for me, I hate her for her. But somewhere along the line in this three-and-a-half years of getting bounced back and forth in front of this courtroom, I kind of got the idea that something had transpired in front my mother, because while while I was in this institution, she'd come to visit me and she was sober. And it was a great revelation to me. And at the end of three and a half years, they came to a compromise and put me in a boy's home in San Fernando Valley. When I got there, the superintendent told me, if you're a good kid, we're going to let you go home on a home trip in 30 days. And I was good. And 30 days rolled around and they rolled us on an old truck one Saturday. They brought us out of the San Fernando valley and they took us to downtown Hollywood and they they dropped us off, and I had to ride some streetcars and transfer and run and transfer and catch some more streetcams out to Willowbrook where I lived. And it was an all-day trip, and by the time I got there, the anticipation was about that high off the ground, and was so excited because I don't know what I expected—balloons from the ceiling and cake on the table—and I broke into the back door and there was a drunken party going on there. Nothing has changed except me. I changed. I'd spent three and a half years in Juvenile Hall, and heard a lot of strange things. I heard things like, everybody's a liar and everybody's a cheat. Never believe anybody they used to tell me because the minute you start to believe them, they start to use you. Never show anybody any signs of emotion because that's a weakness. And anytime they know you've got a weakness, they'll use you." And more important than anything else, never reach your hand up out of the gutter because the moment you do that, somebody comes along and kicks you in the teeth. Now, I didn't want to believe that. But something way down inside of me told me, no, there's more to life than that. But I walked out of my mother's house that day I made a vow to myself if I lived to be 500 years old, I'd never show anybody any human emotions again as long as I live. And I went out in the street corner and I got drunk. And I came back next month and I went back to school and I came drunk again. And along about this time in my life I started to create images—images that kept me in stark terror and fear that I didn't understand. Because when I was in this school in the San Fernando Valley, I was supposed to be the all-American boy. And so I was always terrified and feared that they were going to find out what the all-American boy did when he went on these home trips then once a month i'd get on this truck and i'd go down into my neighborhood and i get on the street corner and i'll get a gallon of wine and i become the leader of the gang and i was always afraid that the gang was going to fine out i didn't want to be their leader it seemed like to me i had a zipper on my inside and everywhere i went around i prayed somebody's gonna pull that zipper open see how i felt and the only thing that made it go away and made the madness subside is when i put this nectar of the gods inside of me and took the madness away It's the only way I found out that I could live. One day, I was sitting on one of those street corners and I had a gallon of wine. And I took a big drink of that wine and nothing happened, and I got scared. So I took another big drink to this wine and then nothing happened. And then I really got petrified. So the first thing I knew, I'd guzzled the whole gallon of the wine and I was sitting there as sober as I am right now, scared to death because my magic wasn't working anymore. more and I didn't know what to do about it and the madness was about me and I asked sitting there and a guy come along and tapped me on the shoulder and he said Johnny why don't you try these and he gave me some pills. I found out that if I ate pills and drank wine I can make the madness go away for a little while and I went back to school with the knowledge that I'd lost a friend and gained another. I come home a month later and went right to the two things and one day I was sitting on the street corner and I had a sack of pills and a gallon of wine and I'm drinking wine and I'm eating pills and nothing's working. And I'm sitting there scared to death because this thing isn't taking my madness away from me. And when I'd exhausted my supply and I was sitting there as sober as I am right now, scared to the death because his magic hadn't left me, a guy come along and tapped me on the shoulder and said, why don't you try this? And he gave me some morphine. And then I found out that if I put morphine in me and swallowed pills and drank wine, that I found a combination of things that sustained me for the next 14 years of my life. It was never the one or it was never two, it was a combination of everything. And I went on about my business and I finally became too old to stay in that school and I came back into the south part of Los Angeles to become a gangster. I come out there to be the Irish Lucky Luciano of Willowbrook. And you know, that's a tough thing because I come outta the neighborhood and I'm a tough kid and I supposed to have some kind of a status symbol because I'd just done a lot of time. and I come walking out of there and there's a bunch of gangsters there and I'm going to be a gangster and so I've got a reputation of being a tough kid so they're going to take me out to be gangsters with them so they take me on in my first deal and I'll be the look out and they go on to do their business and when they come out a gangster and whatever they're gangstering the lookout is getting arrested and put in the car for being asleep on the curb and they gave me another deal deal, and I muff that too, because I was the type of guy who never stayed awake very long. I was an oblivion sort of a fellow. You know, it amazes me sometimes when I hear about people sitting down and taking how they used to roll that stuff around in their mouth and chew it up and let it trickle down their throat. If I'd have had to wait for that long, I'd have killed myself. Because I believe very thoroughly what is written in the book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And it's in there, in the chapter of A Doctor's Opinion, it says that men and women drink essentially for the effects induced by alcohol. And although they admit that it is injurious, after a time they cannot differentiate the truth from the false. And they think that their alcoholic life is the only normal one. Now you take somebody that's killing themselves and they think it's absolutely and totally normal. You've got some kind of a nut. And that's the way I was. and there's also something in this book that I love very much particularly in this particular chapter and it separates you and me from all the rest of the people on the face of this earth nobody seems to understand it but you and I and nobody who's never had it would ever understand it unless they had it and it's called The Phenomenon of Craving and this little doctor who wrote this in his book said in his experience in 22 years of working with people like you and us that the only thing that he'd ever seen that ever removed the phenomenon of craving from these people had been a psychic change and I didn't know all this only thing that I knew was that I could not become a part of anything that I was a failure at everything in life that I'd ever attempted and I couldn't even be a gangster the gangsters didn't want me and I'd already given up on the fact that I'd never be anything decent So I went into oblivion, and the next thing I knew, I'm in the Los Angeles County Jail. And I discovered a beautiful place in the Las Angeles County jail. I found a place that you could tell any kind of a lie you wanted to tell. And the only requirement for telling all these lies was that every once in a while you had to sit still and wait for somebody to lie back at you. And I was in the LA County Jails stealing into millions and dealing into thousands, and they called me out of there to go to court. and I walked in front of the same judge I'd been in front of six and a half years before and he said, I sentence you to the Whittier State Reform School and my mother stood up and said, I appeal it. And I looked at her and I said, for God's sakes, Mom, sit down and shut up. I'll be an old man before you get me out of this one. And I guess the judge was getting old and he wanted to resolve this case before he retired because he came to some kind of a compromise with my mother and sentenced me to the United States Army. You know, every once in a while I pick up a newspaper and I find out where people are burning draft cards and my boss has sent his kid to Canada two or three times to keep him out of the draft and all these kind of things. I think that's a wonderful thing. They took me out of a Los Angeles County jail in handcuffs and took me to the provost marshal in Port MacArthur in San Pedro and gave me to him and said he enlisted. Now, you take a 15-and-a-half-year-old nut that don't believe in anything. If you tell him to go this way and he goes that way, and you tell him to stand up, and he sits down. You tell him to go to sleep and he gets awake, and you turn him loose in one of them beer halls, and you've got a problem. I was in the Army a couple of weeks, and the sergeant told me something I didn't like, so I quit the Army. And I went across the border in Mexico to live because I thought they'd use my talents a little better over there. And I ran out of money, and I got scared, and I came back, and they arrested me and put me in the guardhouse. It threw me in the guardhouse in Fort MacArthur, and there I went down and went through my first withdrawals. And you know, prior to coming into Alcoholics Anonymous—I don't know how many of you were like this—I used to scream out in my madness and in my despair, I never had an opportunity in life. That's what I used to say. I used say, nobody ever tried to help me, it was always me against the world. What kind of a chance did I have? I'd come out of that ghetto from them drunken parents, and every time I turned around they They threw me in one of these institutions. I never had a break, I used to tell myself. You know, since I've been in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I've being required to write out an inventory. I found out many things. I found that people have been trying to help me everywhere I've ever been. I found not that there was a judge in Kansas many years ago who tried to help me. I found up that people had their hand extended to me all my life. But you see, I was kind of the guy that looked in the hand and said there was nothing in it and I didn't have anything to do with it. I found out that that judge in Kansas Was trying to get me away from these people Because he didn't want me to turn out like my uncle And I turned out worse than my uncle Then I found that there was another judge In Los Angeles who tried to get Me away from my mother, but he wouldn't let that happen But one of the things that stick out More than anything else in my mind was when I was In this guardhouse in Fort MacArthur, there was a guy A career soldier. He saw me laying there Chewing my tongue in two and kicking and bucking And screaming around in that place And he went out and bought me a pint of whiskey and brought it back in To give it to me to ease my pain And I remember sitting there drinking a man's whiskey and looking at him and figuring he was some kind of a fool. If the situation had been reversed, he would have laid there and died, and I wouldn't lift a finger to help him. I went on in the Army and I stayed there a while, then I came back out and I became a gangster for a while. And I went along pretty good, screaming out of my madness and never harming anybody. Just leave me alone and let me do my thing, I'd be all right. If they'd let me alone and let me do my thing, I would have been dead before I was twelve years old. I came out of that army and I ran amok in the southwest part of Los Angeles screaming this thing and not doing anything, and I told you that I was the middle boy of three boys. Now if I cared about anything at all in my life before I came to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I cared for my baby brother. Now I'm not about to profess or tell anybody I loved my baby brothers because I wasn't capable of loving anything. thing. My baby brother was a figment of my own sick ego. I was going to create something out of this kid that I never was because I knew way back then that there was something wrong with me. I knew I wasn't like other people, but he was going be different and I was gonna make something good out of this child. In 1951 they arrested me and put me in the Los Angeles County Jail and my mother come to visit me. And she screamed at me through the visiting screen that I was a murderer. That my baby brother had gotten into some of that poison and taken taking an overdose of it and died. I went back to my bunk, and I got up on my bunk and I knew I was supposed to be doing something but I didn't know what. Three days later I sat at this kid's grave in handcuffs while they were burying him. I had all the guilt and all the shame and all of the remorse and all that humiliation and the degradation of a lifetime hanging on my shoulders. I wanted to cry and I didn' t know how. I didn''t have the simple gift of tears that God gives every creature that is born on the the face of this earth. And the reason I didn't have them was because I didn' t think they were necessary. I didn''t think anything was necessary until I needed it, and then by the time I needed that, I had already abused the privilege to have it. I went on into the penitentiary and I stayed there five years, and I came out of there five years sicker than I was, and went in. And I came outta that place bound and determined that I was gonna beat this thing and I was going to prove what a psychiatrist in San Quentin told me wasn''t true. He said, ''Johnny, people like you don''t change. You''re doomed to die in an institution he even took me down and he showed me the little green room he said you may even end up here and i gave him my stock answering trade i told him not me i'm different i came out of that institution bound determined that i was going to beat this deal and six months later i'm laying kicking and screaming in a nut house in south pasadena and i came away from that thing chewing my tongue into and i didn't know what was going on and the next thing i knew i'm sitting across the table from a board of Psychiatrists in Fort Worth, Texas. They're talking about my mother, so I started talking about their mother and they threw me out of the room. I came away from there shaking my head and saying psychiatry didn't work. The next thing I knew, I ended up in a place called Lexington, Kentucky, sitting across the table from another board of psychiatrists. I looked at them, and they looked at me, and I looked them, and they look at me. I told them to cure me. When they didn't do it in five minutes, I got up and left. And I got on a train, and I came back to California, and said to myself, Psychiatry don't work. How could it? How could anything work? I've sat down across the table from some of the finest minds in the field of psychiatry that the world has ever known, and not one single time in my entire life have I ever uttered one word that's true. I never told them things like, Doctors, you don't understand. I'm scared all the time, and afraid people are going to find out how scared I am. and i feel guilty about everything and i hurt all over and i don't understand some of the things that go off inside of me and the only thing that keeps me from going completely and totally insane i don' t know and then that crazy thing and upside every you're afraid that somebody's going to ask you that question what are you afraid of and you'd have to give them that crazy answer i don''t know you're just afraid and i think way back in the deep recesses of my mind i was afraid tremendously afraid and frightened to death that i was absolutely and totally in sync and I didn't understand it but I never told anybody that I never told anybody anything I just sit there and bit it and swallowed it and choked it and I came back to Los Angeles and I threw in the sponge and a little over 13 and a half years ago I ended up in the Los Angeles County jail strapped down on the bed with the doctor standing over me telling me I was going to die he said son you're going to dine there's nothing I can do for you and I told him okay And he left, and all day passed and all night passed, and he'd come back to my room the next morning. He stood at the foot of my bed, and said the same thing. He said, Son, you're going to die, and there's nothing I can do for you. I told him, Okay. All day passed, all night past, and it got time for that man to come back in my room the next morning, and I had a terror grip me that I've never known before or since in my entire lifetime. The idea came to me that was going to live, and that I wasn't going to die. I was going to get up out of that bed and go into the penitentiary, and I was going to come back out and start that rat race all over again. God knows I didn't want to do that. I was twenty-seven years old, and the thing that frightened me more than anything that ever frightened me in my entire lifetime was the very idea that I was going to live. I laid in that bed for eighteen days and eighteen nights, and I didn' t eat, sleep, drink or do anything. I just laid there. One night, because I didn''t know anything better to do, I said the only prayer I had ever said in my life. I said, ''Oh God, help me.'' And nothing happened. except I went to sleep for a little while and I started to get better and better and the next thing I knew I'm up running around in jail and the 13 years ago the 16th of this month I was sitting in a place called San Quentin and I was faced with the first moment of truth I've ever been faced with in my entire lifetime prior to this I had done everything in life to prove I wasn't drunk because my old man was drunk drunk. And I'd always figured that somewhere along the line I'd remain a notch or two above my old man. Thirteen years ago, the sixteenth of this month, I got a telegram from a woman that I had married, and she said she had given birth to a baby daughter. And I made the first honest admission ever made in my life. I had to admit to myself that at least when I was born, my own man wasn't in the penitentiary for the second time. So So just maybe, just maybe I had sunk in a notch or two below my old man. But the next day that all ended because I went out into never-never land. Thirteen years ago, the first weekend of November, I was sitting in a penitentiary called Tehachapi It was on a Sunday morning, and I didn't have anything better to do. And I saw some women come into this institution, and I followed them. Now I don't care why anybody else comes to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I could care less why anybody comes here. I came to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous almost 13 years ago To smell perfume, and I've been here ever since I followed the scent of these women And if some of you have noticed over the weekend I sniff when I get close to you I want to make sure I'm still in the same place And I wandered into a big old Quonset hut of a building they got there And I sat down in the back row and I looked up on the backboard And I saw two big A's and I thought to myself my God, I wandered into an anti-aircraft brigade. And I nudged this clown next to me and I said, what is this? He says it's Alcoholics Anonymous. And I sunk down in the seat because I didn't want any of them convicts to see me and never them wino. Because I had an image. I was a big time penitentiary politician. You know, and the strange thing about this, this clown that I nud, a few months previous to this had seen him drag me across the yard in the heels and sang Quentin drunk on prune oh throwing up and singing and yahoo taking me to solitary confinement but that was a status deal to sit clean and sober in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous was beneath my dignity and I sit there and waited for these women to tell their racy stories and they got up and he threw me Kurt because they had sort of a smile on the face and he had sort sort of a twinkle in their eye, and they sort of radiated a certain something that I didn't understand. And right away they ruined it all because they started to talk about God. And when I came to you people and you talked to me about God, I ran from you. And it wasn't that I did not believe in God. I believed in him all right. I didn' t believe he hated me. And if he hated me, I hated him back. When you talked with me about a God, I thought about a god who locked me up in an institution when I was seven years old and still had me locked there when I was 27. He talked to me about a God I thought about a guy who'd made me a practicing drug addict at the age of 13. He talked me about God I thought a God who made me responsible directly or indirectly for the death of my 17-year-old brother. He talked about a man I thought I never gave me anything. A God who took and beat and persecuted and demanded and said rigorous things on me that I couldn't understand and because I couldn' t understand them I hated him for putting them on me. So I ran from him. but I couldn't mistake the twinkle in your eye and the warmth about you and the thing that is an Alcoholics Anonymous everywhere that I go and if you're new here in this meeting tonight I urge you to do one thing I urge você de se acertar reach out to the person standing next to you or sitting next to vous and grab their hand and hang on to and feel this thing and embrace this thing and hang onto it until you get the strength to stick out your hand for somebody else because when I came in and I didn't have the ability to do that. The only thing I knew was that this was something that I'd never seen. And the following Sunday there was another group of people come back into this institution and I went back to see if they had had this deal and they got up there and were twinkling and smiling all over the place and talking about God so I got up and ran out the door. One day I was sitting in that meeting one Sunday and I saw a guy walk in that I knew did 23 flat years in the penitentiary and he stood at a podium of Alcoholics Anonymous and he told me something I've never forgotten it made more sense to me than anything I've ever heard and it makes more sense to me today than it did then he stood on the podium of Alcoholic Anonymous and looked down at me and he said you just don't have to do it like this no more you just won't have to live like this no one. God, nobody ever told me that. People have been telling me I hadn't ought to do things all my life. They told me I had not a drink so much. They tell me I haven't oughta do all the things that I did. But nobody ever me that one thing was secretly down inside of me that I knew, that I didn't know how to live. And after the meeting was over, I went up with this guy and I said, Les, how do you learn how to lead? And he looked at me and he said, Johnny, He said, There's a book called Alcoholics Anonymous over there in the library. You go over and get that book, and I'll go home and pray that you find some part of you in that book. And the next day I went over to the library where the book was, and I took the book and hid it under my coat, and I went Over to My Cell and hid It Under My Pillow. And when my cell partner wasn't around, I started to read it. And one time I was reading Chapter 3. And I looked down at the book, and I thought to myself, My God, this is a beautiful thing. I found a way to get my mother sober. My mother was the only one who was still coming. One Sunday she got up and drove all the way to that institution, and she sat down at the visiting room to see her son. And she looked up and she saw a madman standing on the other side of the table throwing literature at her and screaming at the top of his lungs, Mom, you've got to go to Alcoholics Anonymous and learn how to get sober. My mother left and she didn't come back. But I'm glad of that. I'm so tickled of that that I don't know which way to jump. because the very nature of my illness I only talk to you about my illness made it necessary for me to run off every living thing that I had it made it necessarily for me to kick and destroy and tear down every dream or every illusion that I ever had it made It necessary for Me to rid Myself of everything in life to blame My dilemmas upon because I'm the type of an individual if I had anything to blame for My dilemma I'd still be out there blaming them that's the type Of guy I am and when I had nothing left to do or nobody left to turn to or to use or to hang on to or to dream about I turned to the people of Alcoholics Not and I didn't turn to you collectively as a group I picked out one I picked up an old lady who used to come to this institution by the name of Myrtle and I loved her more than I've ever loved anything in my life and if there's any reason in God's world for me being here tonight it's the things that I learned at that old lady's knee. She is my mother. There is more to being a mother than just having children. I found that out because I had a mother who had me, and I have also been given the privilege in Alcoholics Anonymous to have a mother who loved me and taught me the very necessities of life. She used to say crazy things when she came to that institution that I didn't understand. She used say good things start to happen to you when you come to Alcoholics Not. People start to recognize changes in you when they come to alcoholics not. And I was getting ready to go to the parole board, and I thought they ought to recognize them changes. I was one of those guys who came in and wanted instant, instant recognition of my accomplishments. Ten days before I got ready to go to the parole board, they called me in front of a man who gave me a letter and said they were taking my infant daughter back to the Midwest, and they recommended that I never be allowed to lay eyes on this child. And he gave me some divorce papers, and ten days later I went in front of the parole Board and they told me I couldn't go home. and I went to a meeting with Alcoholics Anonymous the following Sunday to get up at a podium and denounce you in front of my fellow convicts but I never got to the podium I sat in the front row of that meeting and I held that old lady's hand and she told me over and over and over again honey there has to be a reason for everything that happens to you in this lifetime and what she toldme wasn't really important the way I felt was you see for the first time in my life I sit still in a penitentiary and I held an old lady's hand and for two hours of my life I didn't hurt. For two hours of my lifetime I had a feeling and an awareness about me that everything was going to be all right. I was feeling the way I thought I was always supposed to feel right after I took a drink of alcohol but never quite got there. And I was feelings the way I thought I was supposed to be laying in them opium dens in Mexicali but never quite got that. And I hung on to her hand until I almost squeezed it in two and when she got ready to leave that institution that day I looked at her and I said, Mom, what was it? And she looked at me and she had the most beautiful twinkling blue eyes you've ever seen she said sweetheart the answer to any question you may ever have in your lifetime lies between the covers of the book called alcoholics anonymous and she left and i went back to my cell and i took out my book and i started to read it and this time i started to read with a different idea i wanted this thing i wanted just thing more than anything else that i've ever wanted in my life please turn tape now do not run to end thank you i've ever wanted in my life and way down inside of me there was a desperation that told me that i was different and they couldn't have it so i read that book from cover to cover and upside down and i went to meetings and i talked about alcoholics anonymous and i attended meetings regularly and i listened to tapes and i read that book and i the literature and i run around that institution like an idiot for a year and a half and i turned around and all of a sudden i had that knot inside of me and it was killing killing me, and the madness was about me. And I didn't know what to do about it, and I was sober. And one day I was reading that book, and I threw it across the room, and I screamed out in my madness, I'm different. This thing won't work for me. And I went over and I picked it up, and when I looked down, I saw the most simple statement I'd ever seen in my life. It said, how it works. I want you to know I almost missed that right behind that simple statement in the program to recovery called alcoholic non it says very simply and it told me exactly who makes the program of Alcoholics Anonymous who doesn't says rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program But there are two lines in the preamble of the fifth chapter that I love more than anything else. It says, If you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you're ready to take certain steps. And the other line says, Here are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery. Now, I believe that for me, that without the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous, there's no recovery. And I'll tell you why I believe that. At the time I read that simple statement in that book, I had been active and sober in the program of Alcoholic Anonymous for a year and a half doing all the things you told me to do. And at the end of that year and half, I still had the madness that used to drive me back to the well about me. And I had to sit down and I had admit that I was an alcoholic, and I couldn't do that. I couldn't even admit that my life was unmanageable. And I'd been a ward of the State of California since I was nine years old. That automatically qualified me for the second step in our program, recovery, where it says I had to come to believe the power greater than myself would restore me to sanity. And I couldn' t do that one either. But you see, I had a commodity going about me that I don't think any drunk ought to be without. And it's called pain. I hurt and I was desperate and I was scared and I hurt so much that I couldn't stand it. And I'd hurt all my life and I've been scared all my lives. And these people told me it was in this book, this thing that they had, and I wanted it so bad I was in that book. And I hurt so bad that one night I laid on my bed and I said, OK, I quit. And the next morning I got up and I went over where I worked and I sat down with a tablet and a pencil and I started to write about things. And I don't know what I wrote or who I wrote it to or what I write about really. I only know what happened to me while I wrote. It seemed like there was a jackhammer inside of me knocking down all that knots and lumps and things that I'd lived with for a lifetime. And when I wrote till I was completely and totally exhausted, I got out and I walked around the corner and I knocked on a man's door, and I said, Reverend, I'd like to talk to you. And I sat down with a man and I spent three and a half hours telling him about every rotten, filthy, corruptible thing I had ever done in my life. And at the end of that three and a-half hours I sat alone in that room with that man 185 miles away from that little old lady and I felt the way I was feeling when she was holding my hand. And that has been almost eleven years ago. And in those eleven years that have come and gone not one time has that knot of madness and it's come up and tried to choke me to death. I got up and I walked out of that man's room and for the first time in my life I saw a tree growing and I heard birds singing and I spent a little more time another year in that penitentiary but it was a different deal because I'd become free there and a year later the 4th of June 1961 I walked off and I got out of that penitenciary and it was just like going to another meeting. I walked out of there and there was an old man from Alcoholics Anonymous and Lowell reminds me a great deal of him and I love him very much. He put his arms around my shoulder and he said, welcome home, son. And he took me home to my mother's house and she fell off the steps blind drunk. And I picked her up and put her on the couch and I said, Mom, I'm going to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and she said, fine, I think you should. And I went to a meeting, and I went to another meeting, and I kept going to meetings. And I couldn't drive a car and I couldn' t do anything. All I could do was walk to meetings and nobody came to get me because they didn' t want them to come and get me. The only thing that I wanted to do I'd live with a dream for a year that you would give me the privilege to come in and sit amongst you. I've lived with that dream for eleven years. The greatest thing in my life is a privilege that you allow me to come and sit amongst you." Can you imagine what a tremendous, tremendous privilege a clown like me has when you call and ask him to come in sharing with you? That's pretty good. I kept going to these meetings, and ten days later I came back from the meeting one night and my wife was sitting there. She stayed, and next thing I knew I put put her on a train, and she went back and got my daughter. The next thing I knew, she was pregnant. And it turned around, and I found out that I had to get a job. I found OUT that people weren't going to keep me just because I wasn't locked up. And I didn't know how to do nothing. You know, they don't pay gangsters for not being gangsters. You know? Even if you're a failure at being a gangster, they don' t pay you for being a failure at being gangster. And you can't capitalize on your domino playing ability, or the ability that you've learned to make prune of it. You know, that's not a very nice thing, or they don't tell you how to sniff gasoline either. So I went to an old man, an alcoholic anonymous, and I said, I've got to have a job. He says, Johnny, what can you do? And I said you don't understand, I have got to have a job. He says no, you don' t understand. What can you do? And I says, you don't to understand, I've got to have a job. And I said, I figured that if somebody would give me the junior vice presidency of the DuPont Corporation, I could handle it very well. And he looked at me and he scratched his head. He said, Johnny, why don't you go home and write out an inventory on your qualifications and come back and see me? I told him, okay. And I went home and I got out a pencil and paper and I wrote out the qualifications and my vocational ability. And i found out that I wasn't even capable of digging a ditch. I didn't know how. I'd never dug one. So finally some guy took pity on me and gave me a job in the oil field. He let me work on one of those old rigs down there with those wrenches in my hand so I could get calluses and oil and dirt all over me. And he let me worked all kinds of hours and made it desperate enough for me to run the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and he gave me the dignity of being a man and burning my my own way, which I've always wanted. And then it came around for me to get my first paycheck. Man, you don't know what that means. I got a wife who was pregnant and a little girl, and I'm coming home with the first paycheck I'd ever earned in my life. And I got pictures and dreams inside of my mind of what normal people do when they get paychecks. They go down and they take the wife to the market, and they buy the kid candy. And they wheel a little basket around with the groceries and they carry the groceries in the house and they sit them down. And they rear back and the kid climbs up on their lap and plays with Daddy and eats her candy. And I'd never done anything like that. And all the way home from work, I got this paycheck and I've got this dream in my mind. And I take this paycheck, and I'm so proud, and hand it to this woman that I'm married to. And we load the little girl in the car, and she drives me down to the market, and I walk around so proud because I'm fulfilling my obligation in life as a man. And my little girl is proud, and my wife is proud. And I cash the paycheck, and we get the groceries, and then we go home, and an hour later I ask her for some money to go get the haircut, and somebody had stole her purse. Now if you want to hear somebody scream, you ought to hear a thief when they get stolen from i jumped and kicked and bucked and about that high off the ground and i ran up and down the street and all that business and finally when i got all through i went back in the house and i sat down she poured me a cup of coffee she says you all through and i said yeah she says now you ain't no hot field. You know, I went back to work that day, and I've been working ever since. But I want to tell you something about Alcoholics Anonymous that's happened in my In the ten years I have been out of the penitentiary, great things have come to pass in my life. And the life that is mine today, today, I don't deserve. No way in God's world could I earn the life which is mine because I got the good life. But I want to tell you about ten years in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that I I don't even understand, other than the fact that I've had this blind childish determination. And the one obsession in my life that it remains with me today stronger than ever is the great privilege of just coming and being with you. That's all I want to do. I don' t want to nothing else. Everything went along pretty good in my life. My wife was pregnant and she had another little girl. know. And after that little girl came, something happened. Prior to this, when the little girl came, she used to go to meetings with me. And after the little girl came she decided that she didn't need to go to meetings and she couldn't stand Al-Anon. She used to make up bare excuses why she didn t go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and why she she didn't go down with us. One night we were coming back from Laguna Beach and I had just taken a birthday cake down there and it was my fifth year out of the penitentiary. And my little girls had given me my cake and my wife looked across at me at the car on the way back and she said to me, don't you think it's about time you quit going to those meetings? Don't you know what I'm talking about? Don't think it is about time you owe something to me and these children. Don't do you think it's about time you started to contribute something to this family and these children of yours, and me." And I told her, I don't understand what she was talking about. She says, Yeah, you're always going to them meetings or you're always working. And when you do stay at home with us, you are so tired you can't stand up. And so I got caught in that deal. I didn't know whether to leave you or leave her, her, and I couldn't do either. And I was torn to pieces inside, and I bounced this thing around inside of me. And Myrtle died, and I didn't know what to do. And I tossed this thing back and forth because I couldn' t leave you and I could' nt leave her. And one night I got down on my knees and I said, God, I've got to have a little help with this thing because But I don't know what to do. A couple of days later, I got up and I kissed my wife goodbye, and I went to work. An hour later they pulled me off the job and told me she was dead. And I went where my children were because God in his infinite wisdom had seen fit to put these two children at the grandmother's. And I broke down in front of my eight-year-old daughter, and started to cry. She threw her arms around my neck and said, What's the matter, Daddy? and I said, Your mother's dead. You know what my little eight-year-old told me? She says, I guess God needs Mommy more than we do, Daddy. I didn't tell the little one because she was so small. But two weeks after the funeral, she come running in the house and she jumped upon my lap and she said, Daddy, you lied to me. You told me my mother went away and the little boy across the street said, My mother's death. And I said well, supposedly I told you that your mother they went to live with God. And she said, well, that's all right, Daddy. And she got down and she kissed me on the cheek and she ran out of the house and across the yard and I heard her yelling at the little boy, it's allright, my mommy's living with God." You know, if I don't ever contribute another living thing to those children, nothing, I've installed in them the idea of the God that you gave me, a God of kindness and a God who makes no demands hands up on anybody other than the fact that they just do the very best that they can. We didn't have it too well for a year, those kids and me, but we survived. And I snuggled up real close to you. and then four years ago the 4th of July I went to an Alcoholics Anonymous picnic and an angel came up and asked me to have dinner with him and then the following June three years ago 1st of June I married him one. And without a doubt, I've learned more about the program of Alcoholics Anonymous in the last three years than I ever learned in the ten years previous to coming in this program. Because I found out that the program of Alcoholic Anonymous is a program of sharing one with another in love. That's what it's it's all about. And I found out what a tremendous, tremendous thing it is to be capable or able to share this thing for twenty-four hours a day with somebody that you adore. Myrtle used to tell me, Sweetheart, the more you're loved, the more you love in return. And she said, You've always had it. And And I'd say, well, where is it, Mom? And she'd start talking to me about baseball. But I found out that since I've been married to Dottie that the more I love her, the more she loves me in return. And somehow or other, I'm always short of this deal. And somehow oder I've installed and Dotties installed within the idea of me that this is the most important thing in my life. And she realizes that. she gives me the absolute freedom to love you as much or maybe even more than I love her she gives me the absolutely and total freedom to love my God and love my children as much as and maybe even more than her and the only thing that I ask her in return is that she allows me to love her and she does all kinds of crazy other things like cook my meals and iron my shirts and loves me back more than I could ever give back to anybody if I was to drop dead at this very instant I would have been overpaid aid for anything that I have ever done in my life, because I know what it is to love and be loved. And I learned it from God through you, and by practicing the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous to the best of my ability. You see, I believe that the program of Alcoholic Anonymous is written in a book, that when When I come to the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, I see the program of Alcoholic Anonymous working. And it allows me the choice to become anything that I want to be. There's no limits to what I can reach or obtain or become as long as I embrace the program of Alcoholix Anonymous and snuggle up close to you and never forget about the great gift of life I've been given here. This is a fantastic thing for me, because finally in my life I can say to you without all reservation that I love you more than anything else on the face of this earth. and the reason I can say that is because I belong to you lock, stock and barrel every fiber in my body you created you taught me and coached me and showed me and prodded me and abused me and loved me and cared for me and prayed for me and did all the things that we do for one drunk for another until I could learn to love you and pray for you and care for you and to snuggle you up underneath my arm. And the only thing that you ask of me in return is that this great gift of life that I've been given, that I'd be willing to give it back to you, no strings attached, that I never find it necessary to say to somebody, I can't come and see you because you're too drunk. And when I first came to Alcoholics Anonymous and I first became a monk, I used to sit around and watch people become very wealthy overnight in the program of Alcoholics synonymous, and I used to curse them because I figured I should have all these things. And I used think, why did God beat me to death all the time, spend all of these times in these institutions, and do all of those things, and let all these other people have all of these goodnesses in their lives? Today I am more grateful for my life than anything that I know of. And I'm more grateful to my Father in heaven that I call God than anything I know know of for the things that he's done for me. He's made it necessary and he's been able and he has made it absolutely necessary in my life to strip me of every living prejudice known to man. You see, God, as I understand him, has put me in a position that if somebody comes and knocks on my door, I can't tell them, you can't come in here because I've never had that. God never told me who his children are. are. He's never pointed them out and said, That one is not mine because he's black, brown, green or beige. He has never said, that's not one of my children because he has a funny problem or he talks funny or he looks funny. He says, These are my children. As he said it to Peter, tend my sheep. So I say to you, love all people like you loved me. Then maybe one day God will reach down and smile upon all of us and say, thank you for being my child. And I can say to you thank you. Thank you for the privilege of letting me love you tonight. Thank you.