Active Participation Not Passive Attendance, the Movement of AA – Johnnie H.

Hi, everybody. My name's Johnny and I'm an alcoholic. I'm glad to be here tonight. I'm glad to be sober. It'd be kind of hard being drunk out there tonight, wouldn't it? I'd like to wake up in the morning with your tongue My tongue froze to the top of your mouth. There was a guy who talked one time, he said he had people that had questions about being an alcoholic. Has he ever woke up with the roof of your mouse sunburned? All kinds of stuff. But I am glad to be here tonight. I am particularly fond of this roundup because I was particularly fond on Clay. And as most of you know, I was Clay's sponsor when he died. And the last time I was here two years ago, he and I had breakfast one morning. He asked me to be his sponsor. And two weeks later, three weeks later or however long it was, he died. So I just tell you that so none of you will ask me to sponsor you this weekend. But I am glad to be here tonight. I want to thank the committee or whoever is responsible for extending this privilege to me to be in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's always been my opinion, and I hope it always stays so, that it's some type of a privilege to be able to sit with you good people. I have never been able to get it through my head that I have some type of a right to be here just because I don't drink alcohol anymore and I have a right for everything that goes on in AlcoholicsAnonymous just because I was lucky enough to stumble into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and get sober and stay sober. I hope whatever I am asked to do in AlcoholicsAnonymous, that I consider it some type of a privilege to do it. I hope I don't ever get so complacent that I don' t take it that way because an alcoholic like me, if I ever get to thinking that I have a right to everything that goes on in Alcoholic Anonymous just because i got sober and I don''t have to do anything, I probably wouldn't make the next roundup. So I want to stay there. I'm extremely pleased to be here tonight, fully clothed and in my right mind. There was a little time today this afternoon on that highway from Nashville that I didn't think I was in my Right Mind, even though I was fully clothED. But that's like them guys in the Alamo, Texas. If there had been a back door in the alamo, there wouldn't be any Texas. A couple of times if I could have turned around at a highway, you'd have Dick talking to you again tonight. I hope I always have it uppermost in my consciousness whenever I'm in a gathering of Alcoholics Anonymous from whence I came. Because, you know, when you're sober for a period of time and things are pretty good and life seems to be good. Sometimes that life that I used to live before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous is so far back there and so different from the life that I live today in every aspect of living that it's totally almost like some type of a dream. How many of you ever had a drunk dream? Well, hang on for the rest of you. Your time is coming. I've never had a drunk dream. I have a dream that reoccurs every once in a while, particularly when I'm tired. And that's a dream where I wake up and Alcoholics Anonymous has been a dream. And everything that's happened to me here since I've been to Alcoholics Anonymous is something that really didn't happen. It was just a dream I dreamed. And I wakeup in that cold sweat, in that cell in solitary confinement in the maximum security penitentiary. and I'm very glad to wake up and look around and see where I'm at and remember that Alcoholics Anonymous is there because I came to in a cell in solitary confinement in a mass security penitentiary a little over 37 years ago crawling around on my hands and knees like an animal I didn't end up in that type of a situation because I drank too much whiskey or used too many drugs I ended up in a situation because I was searching for something thing crawling around on that floor, scratching at that floor and that concrete thing that I was in for this certain something that had always seemed to be missing in my life. This unending search that I had from as far back as I could ever possibly remember to find out what it was that was wrong with me, what it is that made me so uncomfortable wherever I was, what is it that always made me an outsider no matter what I did or what I went through and no matter how much people tried to make me a part of everything and how much I tried so hard to be a part of everything, I always felt like an outsider all my life. And I know it was something that went back as far as I could ever possibly remember because my entire lifetime before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous had been in search for this seemingly thing, this something that was wrong with me, but I didn't know what was wrong mit me. Oh, I was restless and irritable and discontent when I was a youngster, and I was angry and hostile and I felt different, but I did not know that that was a symptom to the most deadly disease that has ever been known to man. I was not armed with that information because I hadn't been to Alcoholics Anonymous yet. And I hadn'T been armed with the thing that the book Alcoholics Anonymous teaches me, that people like me are afflicted with these terrible things and what a great awakening it was. And I just thought I was different and I was angry about all that kind of stuff and I didn'T know what was going on. Everybody in my family drank whiskey so whiskey wasn'T any mystery to me. I didn't want to be like them. My uncles drank whiskey and went to penitentiaries and my aunts drank whiskey working in houses on the other side of the tracks. Mom drank whiskey and beat up Dad, and Dad drank whiskey and beat him up Mom. They both got together and beat me up every once in a while. I saw what whiskey did. I made a vow to myself from my earnest recollection. I'm not going to drink. I'm never going to be like those people. And I started looking for a way out of this deal a long time ago. I looked up one day and saw my grandmother. Now, my grandmother lived when she was 90 years old. She never took a drink of alcohol or smoked a cigarette in her life. Now, my grandmother wouldn't think it's a big deal that I've been sober over, and I'll call it synonymous, over 36 years. Big deal, she'd say. Ha, ha, ha. I ain't had a drink for 90. I'd look at her and say like I always say, yeah, Granny, but there's four or five times when you should have had a drink. It might have made it a little bit easier on you. Just can't understand why people don't want that situation to happen to us. But my grandmother lived in this sea of insanity. Her family were all crazy. All of them. My uncles, all my uncles were in penitentiaries. All my aunts were working in whorehouses. And these are all her kids. And my mother's drunk and my dad's drunk and everybody's drunk and her husband, my grandfather's drunk all the time. And my grandmother lived in that city, that thing. And on Saturday nights she used to gather up and have the war zone in her house. I mean, they gathered up over there and just tore the place up. And on Sunday morning, Grandma would get up and put on her best dress and take off and go somewhere. where. I didn't know where my grandmother went, but while she was gone, something had happened to her. I could see that as clear as I could See you. She came back. She was a little lighter in her step and a little easier to being. And I remember that very vividly. I remember dancing over these crazy people and cleaning them up and cooking for them and singing songs to Jesus. And right away, that proved something to me, that there's nothing wrong with church. Nothing at all. Nothing wrong with it. My grandmother got everything out of church that I'd get out of Alcoholics Anonymous. And my grandmother wasn't even alcoholic. I had some type of a crazy idea that I should go sit where my grandmother sits and do what my grandmother does and I'd be like my grandmother. But you see, I didn't know then and I didn' t know for a long time because I hadn' t been to AlcoholicsAnonymous that I'm not like my grandfather. I didn''t know that I was bodily and mentally different from my grandmother I just thought my grandmother wouldn't have these things happen to her in church so I'd go over there and they would happen to me because I wanted them to happen to me. I didn't want to feel the way I felt. I never wanted to feel the way that I felt, maybe that's why I drank because I didn' t want to feel the same way the way i felt all the time out of sorts and apart from and all this insanity that was going on inside of me and this madness that constantly stepped up into my head and so I got up one Sunday morning went over to my grandmother and sat at my grandmother's church with my grandmother and watched this magic transformation come over my grandmother but there wasn't anything happening to me that day I didn't know what was going on I looked around it seemed to be happening to other people in there but nothing was happening to me and all that did for me is make me angry make me feel more different make me fear make me more afraid I suppose you know one more time you've gone to the well and you don't take a drink and you go away I don't know what's going on I left that thing probably that day discouraged I don' t know whether I did or not went back home and sat down with grandma and had some cookies and milk or something I don''t know whatever it was a couple weeks later Later, I'm sitting on the back porch of my grandpa's house with my grandfather. My grandfather drank a whiskey out of a fruit jar. My grandfather took a couple drinks and he set this jar down and he went in somewhere. I don't know where he went. And while he was gone, I did something that I said I'd never do. I took a drink of alcohol. That's all I did. The next couple of minutes of my life is what makes me alcoholic. See, I am not alcoholic because I spent the next 20 years creating mayhem out there in the world. If I read the book Alcoholics Anonymous rightly, in the doctor's opinion, it says that I have some type of an abnormal reaction to alcohol. And I do. As I look back over it now, I have a really abnormal... Alcohol does something for me so that book says that nothing else seems to do for other people, mainly other people who aren't affected with this thing. I don't know why that is. I don't know why it is about my body that makes my body different than my older brother. My older brother was an alcoholic. I don'T know why that was. And I'll tell you something, in all the years that the geniuses of the world have been studying alcoholism, nobody has ever figured that out. Nobody has ever figure out or come up with a reason. Oh, they've tried, you know what I mean? They even experiment on pigs to try to see why they react like we do sometimes. time. And that's really a nice shot in the arm for people who think that alcoholism is on the upper level of things. I don't know. Thank God I don'T know. But that whiskey does something to me. It goes in tie to me kind of still as a screaming madness. It takes me from the black pit of nothingness, stands me into the gray fringes of the business of of living and installs in me some type of arrogance. I say, 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 around the bad people. It's okay right here. That's a wonderful thing for somebody who's completely and totally out of source to happen to them. It's a magic thing that I think people like me pursue into the gates of insanity and death and beyond because I did. But that's not what took me into the gates of insanity and death and beyond, the physical reaction I got from alcohol. What got me and what was the baffling thing about my life and what killed probably more alcoholics than anything that I know of is this thing that kicks in for people like me, alcoholics of my type our book talks about. It's called the phenomenon of craving. Once I take a drink of alcohol, once I ingest a drink alcohol in my system, I'm powerless not to take the next one. Powerless. I didn't know, and I didn' t know for a long time after I got here, that once I take a drink of alcohol, I'm drinking to overcome a craving that is beyond all human understanding and beyond all huma n help. I did not know that. I had no way of knowing that. Because every time I drank, from the first time I drunk till the last time I drink, I ended up in the same type of a situation. The same thing happened to me time and time and time and again. I took a drink of alcohol, and three days later they pulled me out from underneath a bridge and stood me in front of a judge and sent me to the Hutchinson State Reform School. Twenty years later, I took a drink off alcohol, they pulled me out of a car in Compton, stood me in front of a judge and sent me to 20 years in the penitentiary. That's what happened to me when I drank. I got drunk and went places. I just traveled around out there. I went from reform school school to reform school, to junior penitentiaries, to penitentiaries, to nuthouses. Now they call them treatment centers. I like nuthouse better. I mean, it's a little more macho. I mean really, come on. If you're going to be bad, you ought to be bad for Christ's sake. Don't quit drinking because you puke a little. Hang in there. Give it everything you got. Alcoholics Anonymous works a lot better if you throw throw in everything in the bathroom. You see, that's what I did. I gave it everything I had and I lost the fight. I lost a fight a long time before I ever realized I lost to fight. I didn't even know I'd lost to flight when I got here. It's totally impossible to know what type of a fight you've lost if you don't know what you're fighting. If you haven't got a clue what's going on. And I didn' t have a clue what was going on when I go here. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I had no way of knowing. I'd been declared many things, but that was not one of them. I didn'T know what WAS wrong with ME. So that's what I did. And when I came to in that cell in solitary confinement at the Master Security Penitentiary 37 years ago, there wasn't a single solitary soul left upon the face of this earth that would send me a penny postcard. They were all gone. But they should be gone. And I didn't have any right to have any of them back. I still don't have any right to have anything good and decent in my life just because I was lucky enough to stumble into a room and sit with you a little over 36 years ago. No right. Everything that's in my life that's good and descent in my life is some type of unwarned gift from a loving God that I found in Alcoholics Not In. because I didn't do anything before I came here to deserve the life that I live today. And if I spent every waking moment of my life, from now until eternity, trying to put back into Alcoholics Anonymous, I would never be able to repay for what I've received just today. It's the most amazing thing that I know of. That the more you do around here, the more there is to do, and the more there is to do, the better it gets. It's the most amazing thing that I know of. I didn't know all that. I didn' t know when I came to in that cell in solitary confinement that I was going to stumble into a meeting of alcoholics and all that, no? I didn''t have the slightest idea. On the fourth day of November 1959, I'm sitting in the yard of a penitentiary. I saw some women walk across the yard. I got up and followed them. That's all. I just followed them, maybe like a little puppy dog. Just following them over there. I didn't know what it was. The most amazing thing about that is I'm sitting with some of my old partners. None of them said anything either. They just, you know, they had a long since tried to quit saying anything to me anyhow. When you've got a crazy person on your hand, you really don't engage in meaningful conversation with them about stuff. And you damn sure don't suggest anything to them or question their actions. Because you may really see some action. And so they don't say nothing to me, and I got up and followed them into this old faucet hut of a building. The most amazing thing I know about that today is that nobody said to me where are you going? Don't you know those people are alcoholics because of somebody that said that? You'd have a different talker here tonight because I wouldn't be here. such is the fine handiwork of my God woven into my life to drive me closer and closer and closer to sitting in a room with people like you because just like that day I took my first drink and entered into a world that I was never to leave again for 20 years or better such as the same thing on the fourth day of November 1959 when I wandered into that room and stepped into another another world, that I had no idea what it was or what was going on. I remember moving in and sitting down in that room that day. I had sat in the back row in what I lovingly like to call my throne of contempt. I didn't want to get up too close. Somebody might mistake me for an AA member or something, or whatever those people were. People like me kind of hang out into the shadows anyhow. We don't kind of get out into light. It's almost like a destroying light to people like me. They think we're going to turn into dust or something. So I hang out under the shadows. and I remember sitting in that room that day and I wonder what was going on there strange thing people were sitting up front and there was maybe 140 guys convicts in there and me and I'm sitting back there all by myself with my coat collar up and my shades on because I'm cool and I've got all these different things going on with me and I don't know what's going on and I stare at those two big A's up there and the first thing that popped into my head I thought I was in an anti-aircraft brigade I had nobody ever mention Alcoholics Anonymous to me. I didn't know what was going on. I asked the guy, I said, what's this? He said, it's AlcoholicsAnonymous. I kind of just slid her down in my seat because I didn' t want to see the big gangster hanging out with them winos. I had some type of a reputation I was trying to handle there somewhere or other, I guess. And I tell you sometimes today, you know my old sponsor, my sponsor for 22 years in Alcoholics Anonymous, my first 22 years in Alcoholic Anonymous was a guy by the name of Norm Alpey. And Norm Alpley used to talk a great deal on his talk about seconds and inches. How just seconds and inches we come. I think about that every once in a while when I think About Norm. I think of sitting in that meeting I was reading of Alcoholics Anonymous that day. I'm sitting there staring at the thing I had sold my soul for, and I didn't recognize the answer because I didn' t know what the problem was. I didn''t have a clue. I didn ''t know what was wrong with me, so how in the world could I recognize the answer? I'm kind of fascinated by these people, which seems to be the magnetism for me in AlcoholicsAnonymous is these people. One of the main reasons I wanted to come to Huntsville today is to see some of the friends I made here five years ago who have been very close to me. It's like these two bandits up here on the front row with me. There used to be a couple of gals called Frick and Fat. I don't know what to call these two. I don' t just... But anyhow, I've always been fascinated by the people of Alcoholics Anonymous. Always. I've been fascinated. I didn't understand them when I came here because people like me don't understand them anyhow. You see, what I saw for the first time in my life with these people in Alcoholics Anonymous, I saw people who gave a little just for the hell of giving it. I had never seen anybody like that. Maybe my grandmother. My grandmother seemed to do it. She thought that was her duty and her obligation to do those things. She had to do Those Things because of her family. She had To Take Care Of Them. that these people didn't seem to have these type of restrictions hanging around them. There was an air of freedom about it, and I didn't understand what was going on. But that's understandable too, because I'm a taker. I'ma taker of things, and Iím a user of people, so therefore Iím a loser. Iím selfish, andím self-centered, andít self-serving. Iíve got an ego bigger than this whole room. My entire lifetime was spent before I came to you folks, Folks, and for a long time after I was here, and maybe even a great deal of the time today, I don't know, without a conscious thought or a conscious concern for any other human being who lived upon the face of this earth. I wasn't interested in you at all. Unless you had something I wanted. And when I got whatever it was that you had that I wanted, I cast you aside like so much trash I went on about my business. That's the way I live my life. I didn't live my life like that one day or one week or one month or one year. I lived my lifelike that from my earliest recollection of life until a long time after I was an alcoholic son. And so when I came to that day, there wasn't anybody coming around anymore. I done used up everything there was to use up. I destroyed every dream or every illusion or every hope or aspiration that I may ever have. I threw away every opportunity that God put in my position. I just threw them away. And the reason I threw them away is because I didn't know that I was afflicted with this terrible malady and my first drink of alcohol is the thing that got me. When I'm in one of those reform schools when I was a kid, I was offered a scholarship to the University of California at Los Angeles. And all I would have to do is come out of that reform school, school, go to school and play baseball. That's all. I loved to play baseball when I was young. I played baseball. I love it every time I'm locked up. I was a star second baseman for the San Quentin Pirates for two years. I put that on a resume one time to see how the guy's reaction would be. He says, what is San Quinton? I said, it's a school up north. This guy The guy was so lame, he just looked right by it. You know, I just put another one over on him, fellas. I don't know. God gave me some type of a body when I'm a young man that let me throw a baseball through a wall if I wanted to. I could probably hit a BB and I could run like a deer. And I had all the talents and the aspirations of being a Major League Baseball player. but when I was offered a scholarship in the Pacific Life Boys Home to come out and play baseball for the University of California, Los Angeles I had every intention of doing that because I loved to play baseball but I came out of that thing one day and took a drink that's all I did and the next thing I know I'm in another reform school I never even got to UCLA I was even looked at a couple of times when I played for the San Quentin Pirates by the St. Louis Cardinals. But the same thing happened. No matter what my intentions were, all I did was take that little drink. All I did were just this. And it wasn't to get drunk. See, the big fallacy that goes on around here, the bigfallacy and the big lie that's being perpetrated around here is that alcoholics drink to get drunks. Not after a period of time they don't. They may end up drunk. For an alcoholic of my type does not drink to get drunk after a period of sobriety. I just drink to go, whew, God, just for some relief. That's all I want. But you see, once my mind is tricked into getting that relief, and once that alcohol hits my system, I'm powerless not to take the next one. And there goes the destructiveness. Then comes the drunkenness and the fights. And the jail houses and the penitentiaries and the nut houses. And all I ever started out to do was just go, just wanted to go. See, that's the difference between an alcoholic and a drug addict. After a period of time, a drug addic don't want to go, a drug adic wants to go and an alcoholic doesn't like that. so that's what came to you that day in November 1959 I remember watching these people come in and out of that place on Sunday morning I was fascinated by them I'd stand off at the side and watch them as they drive up and they I don't know they laughed and they kind of joked as they came through the parking lot and they I don' t know what it was I'd never seen anything like that before in my life and one time I asked one of them, I said to him, what do you get out of coming here anyhow? You're some type of a sicko. You like to look at the animals in the cages. What's your deal anyhow? And the guy looked at me and gave me one of those typical Alcoholics Anonymous answers. He said, son, when you can answer that question, you won't have to ask it. I want one of them deep philosophical things that you can get into. You know what I mean? That you can turn your little ego and solve that problem. Let me have something to do here. And in a sentence, the man explained Alcoholics Anonymous to me. And the problem with it, and the problem with AlcoholicsAnonymous is very simple. It's just too damn simple. This is what we do. This is how we stay sober. And some genius sitting on the back row can't stay sober says that's not really what it means, is it? Yes, it is. Sorry. It means means what it means. If you do what I do to stay sober, you can stay sober for over 36 years and you can live an awful good life. It doesn't mean you have to, but it means if you want to live the good life that I lived, there are some things you have to do here. Now, I didn't know that. I didn' t know what was going on in Alcoholics Anonymous, but I've discovered something since I've been sober in Alcoholic Anonymous that I'd like to share with you. I share it everywhere I go anymore because it becomes so meaningful to me. You hear people talk in Alcoholics Anonymous all the time about crossing over some type of an invisible line from controlled to uncontrolled drinking. I don't have any qualms with that whatsoever. I think that's fine if that's what it is. But I'm here to tell you that in my experience in Alcoholic Anonymous, there's an invisible lion here in Alcoholical Anonymous. And if you're You're an alcoholic of my type, and you don't cross over the line you're going to die drunk. And I don't care what your counselor tells you. That's the truth. And that line is where you have to cross over from being a taker to being a giver. It's just a very small little thing. I sit here this afternoon and heard that pretty young lady get up here and say the same thing. How she just wandered around here for four or five years and went nuts, and when she finally decided to do something in Alcoholics Anonymous, her whole life changed. What happened was she crossed over the line. She crossed over that line from a taker to being a giver. And if she stays on this side of the line, she'll never have any more problems in her life with this thing. It doesn't mean you won't have problems. But I don't know what goes on here in Alcoholic Anonymous when I'm new. I sit in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous for a long time wondering, what goes on here? Because I saw people get up at podiums like this and say things like, I used to drink, now I don't drink anymore and everything is just wonderful. Where I'm sitting back there in Inventory Point is this. I guess I'm not alcoholic then. How could I be alcoholic? I'm as physically sober as the guy saying that. and I'm nuts. He says he's alcoholic, he quit drinking and everything is wonderful. I quit drinking and I go crazy. I do. I just snap. So I can't be an alcoholic. And then I heard other things in Alcoholics Anonymous. I heard things like you've got to get busy in AA. I equated busyness with being in motion. I thought the faster you move, the smaller target you make. That's the way it's always been in my neighborhood. Still is. So I move quick here. Oh, I'm quick. When I want to be quick, I am quick. Don't want to being seen. Kind of hard to do something and not be seen. You know what I mean? See, I didn't care about the people of Alcoholics Anonymous seeing me. I didn' t want any of my partners seeing me . See, I didn't want them to think that this big bad gangster dude had went out. Never one time ever stopped to think that maybe I'm doing something for my life and these jackasses are sitting back there looking on. Never thought about that at all. But I'm moving fast so they don't see me. I'm picking up ashtrays. Pouring coffee. Then I go back and sit in the back row, inventory point. Die back there. Don't know what's going on here. I'm doing everything you told me to do. Everything. You say that's what you do, you're alcoholic, you're doing these things, you're not drinking, and you just wonder. I'm not drinking and I'm done with it. I'm just doing these things and I am crazy. How could I be alcoholic for Christ's sake? That's logical, isn't it? I had just described the disease of alcoholism. with the alcoholic. My problem is not alcohol. My problem is sobriety. And if I don't learn how to live in some degree of dignity and sobrietry, I can't stay sober. It's the most amazing thing that I know of. I didn't know what was going on because I sit in these meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous thoroughly confused. I hear selective things when I'm new in Alcoholics Anonymous. Things that were meaningful to me only, but had no earthly use for anything else. I hear things like good things start to happen to you when you come to AlcoholicsAnonymous. People start to recognize changes in you when they come to alcoholicsanonymous. And I'm getting ready to go to the parole board. I want them to recognize something and change it. which ain't done. There ain't no change at all. Nothing's changed. You can't change if you don't change. Isn't that deep? I can just see the genius of Santa. I wonder what that means. Ten days before I got ready to go to the parole board, I was called in front of my probation parole officer in the joint, and I was told that my wife was divorcing me and taking my infant daughter back to the Midwest, and I'd never be allowed to lay eyes on her. Ten days later, I went in front OF a parole board, and they told me I couldn't go home. And I don't think that I've ever hated anything or any group of people more than I hated you at that instant. it. Because for the first time since I'm 10 or 11 years old, I allowed myself, no matter how feeble it was, to have some type of a hope that maybe it could get better, maybe somebody cared. Because I live by the rules that I learned in juvenile hall. Never reach your hand up out of the gutter because every time you do that, somebody comes along and kicks you in the teeth. Never show anybody that you care for them needs to tell me because because that's weakness. I lived like that for a long time. When I let my guard down, I was in Alcoholics Anonymous. So I went back that following Sunday to do the only thing that people like me know how to do. And that's to attack you. And I was going to attack you on my podium. But I never got to the podium that day. I said in the front row of that meeting it's called Forbidden Row and Penitentiary because that is where the free people sit. And I guess I had that air of craziness about me. Maybe again it was another one of those fine woven hands of God working His way in my life. I don't know. But the bulls never said anything to me that day. They just let me sit there. And I remember sitting there holding an old lady's hand by the name of Myrtle Snyder. 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. What she told me that day really wasn't very important. The way I felt was, because for the first time in my life I sat there and held that old lady's hand and I knew, I knew that everything was going to be all right. But I was also leery enough to know that it wasn't mine, that it was not mine at all. It was hers and it was only mine as long as I held on to her. I knew then. And I knew the minute I let go of her hand, I'd be lost in this sea of madness again. I knew that. And so I held on to it for as tight as I could all the way to the gate that day and just held on her hand. And when I got to thegate, I looked at her and I said, what was it, this thing? And she smiled and 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 everything that happened to me in my early days of Alcoholics Anonymous was pushing me towards the investigation of this program of recovery that's outlined between the covers of a book called AlcoholicsAnonymous and the first 164 pages therein. And so I went to the book AlcoholicsAnalymous. I've said it time and time for many different reasons to prove to you I was different, to prove it wouldn't work for me, blah, blah. I think I really went into the book Alcoholics Anonymous if I investigated very seriously to see if I could find this thing that this lady had that was transferred to me that day when I held her hand. That's why I went into The Book of Alcoholics and Anonymous. Not for any noble reason whatsoever. I just wanted to feel that way one more time because I had never felt that way. I always felt like there was a little dark cloud hanging over. I just always walked around with a sense of impending doom. I only knew it was going to be a matter of time before a bullet went into my head or an overdose hit my arm, or I got beat to death or stabbed or thrown off one of those tiers in San Quentin. I knew it Was only a matter Of time, and I never Knew when It was going To come or when It Was going To go. And I had to do a lot Of things to survive, but I did them. And one day, a little time after that, sitting in a room with a man, doing what our program of recovery says is the fifth step, probably the greatest single event that's ever happened to me in my life happened to him. I put nothing in comparison. Coming to Alcoholics Anonymous and getting sober is not the greatest single event That's Ever Happened to Me. I'm sorry. My children being born and my grandchildren being born And the good life I live today is not the most single important event that's ever happened to me in my life. I sit in that room that day and heard myself say to that man that I was alcoholic. The first time I ever remember saying it. And from way down deep inside of me came this freedom that I carry with me to this very instant. As I stand here before you tonight, I know exactly what's wrong with me. Exactly. I'm an alcoholic and I suffer from a disease called alcoholism. I'm not an alcoholic and anything. When I was an alcoholic and something or other, I couldn't have your program. And the reason I couldn'T have it is I separated me from you. I was not like you. I was better than you, worse than you smarter than you hipper than you slicker than you but I was NOT LIKE YOU. you. When I became just like you, an alcoholic, it became necessary for me to practice the principle of this program of Alcoholics Anonymous to the best of my ability, to do what you do, to stay sober. So when I got ready to come out of that penitentiary in June of 1961, In 1961, I came out of that thing armed with only one thing, that to the best of my ability in the 19 months that I'd been there, to the rest of my life, to the most of my abilities, I completed the first nine steps of this program of recovery. To the best OF MY ABILITY, which you could do on a limited basis on the eighth and ninth step and just write letters and try to make some type of amends to them when they come to visit you if they would come. That's to the BEST OF MY Ability. but I also had a dream I also had a Dream and I said to myself many times that I'd lay up there in my bunk at night dreaming about the day that I would be able to come and sit in meetings with Alcoholics Anonymous with you I'd say to myself over and over and over again God if they would only give me that privilege if I could only go sit with those good people I would do anything they asked me to do if I could just go sit with them because I didn't think that I was worthy enough to be in your company. I thought it would be some type of a bring-down for you to allow me to come and sit in your meeting because there weren't any people like me in Alcoholics Anonymous. I had used heroin for 14 years before I came to AlcoholicsAnonymous. And I spent my entire lifetime in and out of institutions or running the streets in gangs and doing the things that people do out there. And I was so corrupt and so crazy that I did everything. And I knew that you would shy away from me and go sit on the other side of the room. So I came out. I went home to see my mother. She fell off the steps blind drunk. I picked her up and put her on a couch and said, Mom, I'm going to an AA meeting. She said, Fine, I think you should. Good. I'd like to stand here and tell you that my mother got sober and came to Alcoholics Anonymous, but my mother never got sober. My mother became undrunk from time to time because my mother drank until she could no longer physically drink. Then she would become undrinked and then she'd come and sit in your meetings undrank until she can no longer sit in these meetings. and then she'd go out and get drunk again and three years ago I buried my mother my mother got drunk and fell down and never came out of the hospital again but for the three weeks that my mother was in the hospital I sat there with her every day and held her hand because I loved her and if my mother was alive the last day that my mom my mother died if you had said to my mother Father, aren't you proud of your son? He came to Alcoholics Anonymous and got sober. And he's been sober all these years. My mother would say to you, my mother would have said to you. My son is not an alcoholic. He got better when he quit running around with them Mexicans. That's what she would have says. So is the great nature and the great malady of this madness that we're afflicted with that's called alcoholism. The total inability to see life as it really is, only as we perceive it to be. Their own little fantasies and dreams. So you want to do something tough? Stay happy and joyous and busy in Alcoholics Anonymous and watch your mother kill herself drinking alcohol in and out of these meetings for 30 years and not be able to do a thing about it. Get in touch with your powerlessness here to find out just how much damn power you really got over what goes on around here or anywhere else. I don't have the power to get anybody sober, for Christ's sake. I sure don't know how to get them drunk either. I don' t even have any power to keep me sober. I don't have any power. I am powerless. I'm given some type of a daily reprieve around here, continued upon my maintenance of certain spiritual conditions. That's all. I'm not sober because I've been sober. There ain't no lock on this thing where you just store it up in a treasure chest over there and just after a while you get enough. You just sit back and wait until it's gone to go get it again. Again, I'm sober today because of what I do today. This is the day I get to stay sober. I ain't got no yesterdays or no tomorrow. This is my day. Yesterdays I got no tomorrow, this is it. This is all I got. And so I better jolly well do the very best I know how to do to maintain some type of a spiritual condition or I may not be sober tomorrow. And my sponsor tells me, and I believe this with every fiber of my being, that the most spiritual thing that I could possibly ever do is to do what I say I'm going to do when I say i'm going I'm not going to do it or give you some good reason why I can't. I think that's very spiritual. My sponsor says it's spiritual. Whatever he says is right. But if I said it was wrong, Dick would call him up and tell him what John said. It's an amazing thing. It's a amazing thing my life is transferred how when I was new in Alcoholics Anonymous how blind I was just wandering around and I knew all about I had all these steps down but I knew nothing about AlcoholicsAnonymous I knew everything I knew about the program of recovery but I wasn't engaged in the fellowship I didn't know what was going on I'd get up in meetings wander around if I felt like it I'd sit there for five minutes go get a glass of water if I thought like it or go to the coffee pot wave at a couple on the way by You know how we are. Let them know we're there in case anybody asks. I had no qualms about turning to somebody next to me while the meeting was going on and started talking to them, except when I was with my sponsor. He'd say, shut up! Oh, make me sit down? He wouldn't let me get up and wander around in meetings. He told me that was the most inconsiderate thing you could possibly do in an A meeting. He said, if you didn't want to listen in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, that was your business. Had I ever engaged the thought that maybe somebody else did? And I told him, no, I hadn't. He said I didn't think so. Selfish, self-centered people like you don't ever think about anybody but yourself. He said if I were you, but I'm not you, he said I would sit still in every meeting of alcoholics anonymous I go to from the time they hit the gavel until they said amen. I said, why is that, Mom? He said, because someday out there in the world when it's coming down softly, you're going to need everything you've ever heard and every meeting you've never been in. Because one of those things are going to save your life. I can't tell you the number of times in my life since I've been sober that those things have come past my life. It's something that I've said or heard or heard somebody else say or seen in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting had been the little trigger that snapped me out of my doldrums. I'm sure that the moment I was supposed to hear that thing, if some self-centered ass had gotten up in the middle of the meeting and walked right in front of me and distracted me. Probably have another speaker here tonight. Such is the thin line that I have come to believe that people like me walk in alcoholic synonymous. What I've come to belief in alcoholicynonymous, I believe it with every fiber of my being, this thing is a matter of life and death. And it's my life. Not yours. Not yours at all. If I go out and get drunk on the way home tomorrow, most of you are just going about your business. But I'll die. But by the same token, if everybody in this room went out here and got drunk tonight, I wouldn't. I'd miss you. But if somebody has to go, better you than me. That's the way I look at things. So I do everything I can to stay here. I can't skate around and do what I would like to do when I feel like doing it anytime I want to. I can do that. I've got to obey the rules of alcoholic phenomenon and be considerate of the people around me because my life depends on it. I can'T maintain a self-centered, self-serving asshole and stay sober. And neither can you if you're an alcoholic of my type. Sooner or later, you've gotto knuckle down and do the deal. I sat here this afternoon and heard that gal say that. I didn't watch her she's wacko at five years sober nuts five years sober do you know what that proved to me that alcohol ain't a problem the sobriety and her actions are her problems if alcohol was her problem what was she doing crazy at five years sober she hadn't had a drink for five years it proved to me such is the great knowledge of alcoholic anomalies as I sit here and listen to things like that and see You see the miracle transposed and the actions of Alcoholics Anonymous turn people's lives around. Because in the action, you get lost in AlcoholicsAnonymous. That's what I've done. I've got lost here. I just got lost up in Alcoholic Anonymous. It's the most amazing thing that I know of. And I don't know anybody in the world who lives any better than I do. Oh, I know a lot of people who have more things than I have. I know more things that I do, but I don' t know anybody who lives better than me. I do. I live very well. I have a host of friends. I've got people all over this country that I love and who love me and who loves to see me. I walk around most of the time, we were talking about at dinner, with a quiet heart. God, what a great thing it is for people like me. Just to spend all day out there just being yourself. Walking around with a quiet heart, not wanting anything for yourself whatsoever. What a great way to live. And all I did was come here try to apply apply these things, clean up the wreckage of my past and give freely of what I've found. That's all. And I've come to understand a God of my understanding, a God on my very own. My grandmother talked to me about a God when I was a child, a God who punished little boys who were bad. My grandmother taught and believed until the day she died that there was a God who rewarded some people and punished others. My grandmother believed that God didn't have anything to do but sit around and teach people lessons. That's what my grandmother believed. I couldn't believe that when I was a child. I can't believe it today. What kind of God would that be? What kind of God could there be that would allow a bum like me, who's done everything under the sun there is to do to live this good life and not let my mother do it? What kind of a God would that be? He said, I don't deserve anything that I've got in my life. My mother was a far better person than I would ever be. I asked that question when I was new. I wanted to know all these things. I wanted them to have these mysteries of life that had been embedded into my life that scared me to death when I Was a Child. I wanted Them all put out into the sunshine so they could evaporate in thinness and be gone. And I asked an old man that I run around with, a guy by the name of Chuck Chamberlain. You know, why I was special. Why I was chosen. He told me I wasn't. He said, I was just one of God's kids. That's all. He said we were all God's children. He said if I was, you was. And if you are, I am. It's the most amazing. I said to him, how come I've been given this good life, Papa? What is it? And he said, Johnny, the reason you're sober is that you've come to understand you're one of God's kids and you act like it. And the great mystery to me at that time was this. What do God's children act like? You know, where do you go read the book? I mean, where aren't they? If we're all God's kid, what do they act like ? We don't act different here. He said, well, Johnny, God's kids just wander around in the world and try to help God's other children get things done that needed to be done. That's all. And they do it for free, and they do It for fun. And they Do It out of effort if they have to extend the effort, which is really no effort. Staying sober is no chore. Do you know that this is the easiest thing I've ever done? The easiest thing I've ever done. It's the only good life I've ever lived, for Christ's sake. It's easy. If it's not easy for you, you didn't live the way I lived. What knocks on the door panics you at any moment you expect a bullet to come into your head. At any moment you take that fix, it may be your last breath on earth. Anytime a car pulls up behind you, you just break out in cold sweat. You get electroshock treatments, hydrotherapy and beat up by policemen. That's a tough life. Now all I do is get up every day, go to work, come home, take a shower and change clothes and go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. That is all I did. That was my life. Some nights I even take and I'd often go to a movie. It's amazing to me. Sometimes I go out and play golf. Sometimes I do a lot of things but my life is so simple that sometimes I don't believe it's that good and that simple but it is simple. I have a sponsor. My sponsor, Norm, died when I was 22 years sober the day before my 22nd birthday and because I thought he was the greatest member of Alcoholics Anonymous who ever lived I made a fatal mistake stake. I thought nobody could ever replace him, which is true. Nobody can ever replace him, but he doesn't have to. So I wandered around in what I think is my most dangerous area for a year and a half without a sponsor. There were a lot of people out there that I could have had be my sponsor. My requirement for a sponsor is that they're sober longer longer than me, and they're busier than I am. That's my requirement because I don't want to be doing more than my sponsor because if he ain't going to do it, I ain't gonna do it either. I mean, that's just the way it is with me. I mean you tell me you want to do something, do it. If it's making you feel so damn good, I'll do it too. That year and a half that I look back on, it's a very dangerous area. I wasn't thinking about getting drunk. I wouldn't think about getting alcoholics and nonics, but my head's filled with all kinds of self-serving thoughts. That's all. My head is always full of self‑serving thought. It ain't never, my head ain't ever with thoughts of you. I'm sorry. I mean, I know there's some of these spiritual giants who just can't get their minds off of you, I'm not one of them. anytime I have a thought in my head it always starts with me anything left over you can have and so for a guy like me to take and give any of his time and any of His effort to a program called Alcoholics Anonymous is highly miraculous self-serving, self-centered people just don't do that they have better things to do You know, like die out there. Or get something else. I don't have that type of deal. I don' t understand what goes on. And yet I come here. One day I found myself sitting in the mission in Los Angeles talking to Clancy. Now, I didn' t go down there and ask Clancy to be my sponsor. Not at all. Now, I went down there to have a hypothetical situation solved or to get input for this hypothetical situation that I had already solved. In other words, I would do what's very familiar in Alcoholics Anonymous. I was going to go down and try to get some justification from the actions I'd already taken. So I told Clancy this big problem, asked him what he would do. and a miracle happened. He gave me the exact same actions that I'd already done. Kind of smug up. I need a sponsor. I think maybe my life hung on a thread that day about that far. Because I got up kind of smogged and self-centered realizing see, what do I need a sponsor for? I started to walk out. I stopped I hopped out the door of his office and something stopped me. Maybe it's another one of them handiworks of God weaving its way in there to save a lost soul. I don't know. So many of them have been woven into my life that it's hard for me to tell when they're in there and when they are not in there. Because I turned on my heels and I looked at Clancy and I said, Clancy, I need a sponsor. And he looked at me and glasses went down on his nose. I thought he was going to say, what an order. I can't go through with it. He looked, and he kind of took his breath away for a moment. He said, okay, let's give it a try. I said, what do you want me to do? Isn't that amazing? A big-time AA member like me with people he sponsors and groups he started and places that he goes, asked another drunk what he wanted him to do. he said, why don't you start off by calling me every day and coming to the Wednesday night meeting I said, okay now it's 13 years later I still call him every day and I still go to the Wednesday night meet the guy asked me the other day why do you do that? I said he ain't told me not to yet But I know you people who are running your own life are doing such a good job. That's why you keep standing up every other month as newcomers, the yo-yos. You ever notice about yo-yo? Those are the people who go in and out on a regular basis. They always look the same. Every time they come back, they look maybe a little haggard more every time. But basically they're the same, they do the same thing, Nothing ever changes. And they have the egotistical idea in their head that all they've got to do is come back in there and sit and something's going to happen to them. I'll tell you what's goingto happen to you. Your butt's goingt get sore and you're going to leave again. You don't change your actions, you ain't going to change. You're just not. I hear people all the time talking to me about being God. God this and God that. That's how I discovered something very seriously. You ever go to one of these short meetings if somebody mentions God over five times in his talk, don't ask them for a ride home. I mean, they're just too spiritual. It's just them and God. I believe in God. I've got a God of my very own. I discovered sitting in meetings with not my grandmother's God. My very own God. God who loves His children. My God's great joy in life is to keep the blessings of His kingdom upon His children. That's the kind of God I found. I found a God here that doesn't favor me over anybody else. A God who doesn't favorite me over anybody else who can't stay sober. A God of my very own. How did I learn about my God? My sponsor told me to sit still and shut up and listen. and I would hear the small, quiet voice of God. Usually it's coming from an alcoholic. What I come to Alcoholics Anonymous for anymore today has already happened to me. This happened to be all afternoon as I sat out there and heard that lovely lady talk. It happened to him sitting over there when I saw Keith get up and open up the meeting and my dear friend Lord, we get up here and read the fifth chapter. It happened to me sitting back there watching the people come up and get these raffle prizes. See, in those brief moments of my life, I'm more interested in what they're doing than I am myself. And in those briefly moments of life, I'm as close to my God as I'm ever going to get. I am never going to be any closer to God than that. Sorry. Because I was taught, and I believe with every fiber of my being, that nature abhors a vacuum, but God abhores a vacuum even more under heaven and earth. I was thought, and so I've come to believe, that if I could empty myself of self, I would be automatically full of God. Such is the great nature of the actions of Alcoholics Anonymous which is allow you and I to get rid of ourselves maybe for a moment and cast our attention on somebody else. Or maybe for an moment we can get up off ourself and walk across the room and stick out our hand and be shaking somebody else's hand. Maybe just for a minute. Then we can fall back into our selfishness and self-centeredness. Or just for an instant, I can feel gratitude in my heart and soul for a guy like Clay who loved Alcoholics Anonymous enough and what he'd found in Alcoholics Anonymous to want to start one of these things let all you share in it just for a moment what a great glorious life AlcoholicsAnonymous is for alcoholics like me who seemingly come out of the darkness and step into the light it's an amazing thing no alcoholic should ever ever ever have to suffer but many of us die And many of us die with the same old cry, you really don't understand my case is different. I feel different in Alcoholics Anonymous sometimes. I heard that lady talk this afternoon. I've sat in meetings of AlcoholicsAnonymous and felt like an outcast in my own home group from time to time. Felt like I didn't belong there and something was wrong with me. But you see when a newcomer comes up and sticks out their hand and taps you on the shoulder, you're no longer unnecessary. You're there for a vital reason. Everything I have in my life I owe to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Everything. Everything I may ever hope to have in my life, I will owe to the program of Alcoholic Anonymous and dear friends, you better believe this. It's a long, long walk from a cell in solitary confinement in the maximum security penitentiary where I stand right now. But for the grace of God, AA and good folks like you, I could have missed it all. God bless you. Thanks.