Alcohol Gave Me the Satisfaction of a Job Well Done Without Having to Do a Da*n Thing – Charlie C.

hi my name is Charlie and I'm an alcoholic and well I want to thank Sherry and Diane for inviting me to come here this year and and Pat for I just had Jim and Dorothy for picking us up at the airport and Sarah for schlepping my family back to back here and a lot of people I know I've known I know a lot of people here, it's not a lot, I shouldn't say that. A lot of People that have meant a lot to me in my sobriety are here today, Sharon and Casey and Marty. I thought I've already done bad. I was listening to Sarah read the end of a vision for you and it says you can't transmit something you haven't gotten. All I'm thinking is I haven't slept right, I'm not getting enough oxygen. I've had nine cups of coffee. What in the hell am I transmitting anyway? I can make those lights blink on and off right now, I think. Some of our friends from Los Angeles have trekked in. This is fun. This is fine. I'm thankful to my wife for having my children tonight and taking them up to the room. And they were kind of tired, so she said, well, I'll stay with them just as long as you mention me. And then she said, and I'm buying the tape. So thank you, Louise. Wonderful, beautiful woman, you. We've been married for six months now. Anyway, any questions? I'm trying to think of exactly what I want to transmit right now. I'm an alcoholic. I have no outside issues. It pretty much begins and ends there. I've heard a lot of outside issues in Los Angeles. You hear them every so often. And I'm afraid I don't have anything more exciting to say than I'm an alcoholic, and I found Alcoholics Anonymous, and I hope that if any of my children or your children have trouble with alcohol years from now I hope they find the Alcoholics Anonymous that I found because as I heard an Al-Anon speaker say one time he said that the first generation of any kind of an enterprise comes in and founds it on hard work and fear and trepidation and uncertainty and then the second generation grows it and flowers it and spreads it around and makes it huge and successful and the third generation squanders the fortune and I'm in the a third generation and I don't want to see that fortune squandered for the next one so it's incumbent upon, and I'm not saying this is nobility, believe me there are some times when you pick up the phone and go oh please don't ask me to talk anywhere I just don't think I can do it. I don' t want to take my clothes off at the airport again just for the sake of the other passengers but it's incumbent upon people in AA to be present for AA and to keep the primary purpose focused and that's why I'm just an alcoholic. And I grew, I'm Pete and Katie's boy. I have nothing of notoriety about me. My parents were, my dad was a Minnesota farm boy with about a fourth grade education and my mom was a lady from Massachusetts with about a seventh grade education. She had to quit school and start working in the depression, during in the Depression, and I was their only child. My mom had had four full-term pregnancies, and three of them died at birth. And I was the one that survived. And don't think I didn't feel a little bit of responsibility being the lone survivor after being told I was the lone one for a long time. I never realized I just felt like... I didn' t feel like I had any sense of duty. I just thought, like, why me? Why? Because I don' t like... I didn''t ask to be born. And I don't like people. Present company excluded, but it's them that are the irritation. And I was walking around today kind of trying to catch my breath and thinking, looking for someone that would be acceptable if I had to have CPR. Trying to stand next to people that were at least attractive. Anyway, so I just haven't liked people and I have a problem with that too because as most alcoholics that I know, I loathe the human race. I wonder sometimes how it ever got into a second generation but I also demand its approval and adoration at the same time which gives you a real sense of torque. It really does keep you moving forward. And why do I have... There's a fly sitting on my hand. Is there anyone from PETA here? Don't worry, if he was on my head and he was old and infirm and ready to go. Anyway, I forgot where I was and now I'm just going to have to start all over. So I was uncomfortable most of my life as a child. I was just out of sorts. I was a rebel. I didn't tell anybody. I was not happy at all. I remember experiencing joy as a kid but I don't remember where And I remember after being about age eight, I found it harder and harder to experience any kind of joy. I didn't know why. I didn' t understand what it was. I was always weighing my response to everybody, trying to see how I could fit in and not attract too much attention and yet still be a part of things that I didn''t understand. I didn ''t like it. And ever since I''ve been in school, I'' ve been told about my potential, potential, which is, according to my family, is legendary. Not understanding, of course, that they don't tell people who are using their potential that they have it. This is something that they only tell people like us. I remember sitting in offices with my parents and some counselor or teacher or priest or somebody with a big folder and they would would look at it and they would shut it after a second and go, you know, Charles has potential. We just don't understand why he doesn't do anything with it. And my response was always the same and that was, I know I've got potential. My parents now know I have potential. Thank you so much. You know I got potential It seems like all God's children know I ve got potential and I will use my potential when I'm god damn good and ready to do it. But I'm not going to use it even that much sooner, you know. When I do use my potential, I hope you've got sunglasses on, Skippy, because I'm going to light you up. But until then, maybe you can take your really pathetic concern for my potential and go wipe it on some other sap because if you were such hot stuff, stuff, you wouldn't be a high school counselor now, would you? It never came out in exactly those words. I usually said something like, I'll try harder. But that's pretty much the story of my life right there. You just add alcohol to that and you've got my story pretty much. I got out of high school with no notoriety. I was launched into the music industry as I was a clerk at a record store, and I was working there. I'm a big – I started college when I was 17, which sounds impressive until you realize I graduated when I Was 30. So I had a lot of detours in my life, so to speak. So I was going to college, one unit, and then working at this record store. and these guys came in and they asked me if I wanted to go to a party which was shocking to me because no one had ever I wasn't a mingler I didn't like parties I'd never really been to a Party party before and I was stunned by it because as I understood it there would be other people at the party and here I was, 18 and I hadn't been to A Party yet so I said okay so I'll go and I got my friend John my lone friend and we trotted over to this party in Santa Ana, California in this nice big Victorian house that somebody apparently didn't want to keep in its original state. And there were about 200 kids there and it was 1968. Sharon, Casey will remember, they had a mirror ball in there. It wasn't disco, it was pre-disco mirror ball. They were playing the MC5 on the stereo. Half the room was just blazed on acid and the other half of the room was drunk and they all thought they were communicating. And everybody was talking and that irritating 1968 BS hippy-dippy jargon that they got from Philosophy 101 and all that hipster bull. Just a bunch of phonies is what they were. The whole house full of them. They're all hip, and they're all cool, and they'RE all groovy, and everybody'S having a great time. Everybody'S into the music, and they really understand the music and theyRE deep in the music and the girls ARE dancing like Joni Mitchell would dance if she WAS there. I WAS standing off to the corner. This IS five minutes into the party and I was livid and I thought to myself why did I agree to come to this thing? I hate these people. This is an exact and I don't know if anybody else follows me but how many of you can be irritated with somebody like I don' t have to name a specific place of course you can be irritated with anybody pretty much anywhere but somebody on the freeway will do something that just gets just even after the serenity prayer just gets so under your skin that it almost reignites some atavistic reptilian memory in the back of your head. And you see them not as a human being, but it all of a sudden is just like they fill out the entire matrix of what's wrong with the world. That guy. I'm not pointing at you. It's that guy. That's him. All right, everybody, get him. So that's how I was at that party. I'm looking at these people, and it just seemed like this is exactly why the world is falling apart. People like this, they're ridiculous. They're horrifying. And then somebody walked by and said, you want something to drink? And I thought, oh, yeah, I'd love something to drank, but I don't want to be like you. This is idiotic. Well, he handed me a can of malt liquor and walked on. So I got this can of malt liquor, and I figured I'm not going to get anything else. So I popped the thing open and started drinking it. And about halfway through that can of malt liquor, it occurred to me that I've been way too hard on you people. Halfway through that Can of Malt Liquor, I started to feel different. I started to feel like a hybrid of John Lennon and Errol Flynn and David Niven, all kind of swirled around in this great magnetic concoction, which is almost impossible to pull off when you look like Sherman from the Mr. Peabody. At the time, I was as tall as I am now, 127 pounds, and I look like a pair of scissors. I have big wire rimmed glasses on, you know. And so... But I just started to feel different. I started to feels like people in this room who are alcoholic understand what alcohol does to make you feel different It... I felt... The only way I know how to describe this and forgive me my friends who've heard this a thousand times before The only way I can describe how it made me feel was for the first time in my life, I felt like I was right there. I was there in that moment with everybody else. We were all in the same moment together instead of me looking through some film that kept me separate from everybody else, that it's not even like a brick wall. It's just this stuff that whenever I tried to push on it, it seems like it moved with me and I couldn't get to the other side of it. And when I drank, it just disappeared and I was part of everybody and I wanted to listen to you. I could listen to your all night. I was just delighted because I'd lost the ability to speak after about four months. I was so delighted to be there. I thought I just... You know, and it wasn't like if... And if you're new and there are probably a couple of new people in the room, I know there's one that identified himself. I didn't have this revelation in real time it did I wasn't standing there thinking wow this is really going to be a great way to explain this when I get sober the only reason anybody in a who's speaking here knows about what happened is that we've all been to a lot of AA meetings we've although a lot of steps we've worked with a lot people and we've We've all taken direction from a merciless sponsor. And we've heard a lot of different stories. And so by having people share their stories with us in this fellowship, I've started to understand what happened to me based on what happened to other people. I saw some of the similarities and some ofthe differences and began to understand that. But for my recollection tonight, I just felt completely electrified when I started drinking. And it wasn't so obvious. It was like Sharon talked about. But I felt, I went into a blackout that night. I wound up hanging on to my friend John's door handle because he wanted to go home. And I was hanging on the door handle, jogging alongside of his car and vomiting on myself and laughing my ass off because I had been to the mountaintop, you know. I had seen the other side. And I'll tell you something really, something so strange when you think about it, if you think About Your Own Lives, I never was the same. From that moment that I drank that first can of malt liquor, I've never been able to be the same person ever again. And I think it really is helpful to remember that because only alcoholics understand what's at stake when I drink. We know what's At Stake with each other. When I talk to another alcoholic, if I'm going through something, and you may hate my guts already, we're only like 15 minutes into this and you may wish that I did need CPR, but I'll tell you one thing about Alcoholics Anonymous and that is that if I was having trouble staying sober tonight and I called you at 2 o'clock in the morning and said this is Charlie, I was at the meeting tonight and I'm having trouble standing sober, there isn't a single person in this room that wouldn't meet me in the lobby to talk to me about it. That's what AlcoholicsAnonymous is about. We set aside every difference we have to go on and share parts of our story to try to mitigate the feelings that an alcoholic has when the world is crushing in on us because it's not just that I sit and crave alcohol when I'm sober. It's that the world bugs me, and sometimes it'snot even in catastrophic ways. I mean, I can handle catastrophe. I can handle all the stuff that's on my insurance policy. I can hndle all that. What I can't handle is that little slight that people make or feeling stupid in front of other people or being made to feel stupid in front of somebody else or doing something really bad and trying to cover up for it and the guilt that hangs in there with it. That's the stuff that makes me feel like I need a drink because I know that if I have a couple ounces of bourbon, I'm going to feel really fine. I'm gonna feel now like I'm there, like I am in the moment that is the window to the future and all that other stuff won't matter. You know? It doesn't matter anymore. I have what I need. Alcohol gave me for a lot of years the satisfaction of a job well done without having to do a damn thing. I sense there are some people who have experienced that feeling. You've got a deadline, you've got to do something, it's in front of you, you have to do it. You have to go do it and I am going to do do it, you know, in a minute. I'll give you an example of my, just to kind of, because I have the most boring drunk-a-log in AA and my friends will attest to that. I have never come out of a blackout saying, you don't cover me, I'm going in. I've never come out of a Blackout saying okay, cut the red wire or keep going men, the summit's just ahead. head. I've come out of blackouts with people saying stuff to me like, boy, I bet that hurt. Because that's just... I'm a vigorous alcoholic. I'm just not a very dramatic one. I was writing... I write for a living. And I actually do. I used to say that, but I really do. And on the side, I'm an astronaut. But I was writing a story and it required knowledge of weapons. You can take one look at me and know that my handgun days are ahead of me. And so I was doing some research and I was reading about handguns and the velocity of of a bullet coming out of the barrel of a handgun, and that a bullet comes out of a barrel of... Now, I'm going to say this, but please don't correct me later if you're a hand gun guy. I know I might be wrong a little bit, but, please, you'll scare me. But a bullet come out of barrel of handgun at 450 feet per second, which by anybody's standards is a wallop. 450 feet for second, 450 feet away, it's like that. but if you fire a handgun into a body of water, it still comes out of the barrel at 450 feet per second. It strikes the surface of the water and then it goes in a little bit further, still 450 feet por second, then it stops and it just drifts to the bottom of whatever the body of the handgun is. That's what the body water is. Such is the trajectory of my life. I come out of the barrel at 450 feet per second in any relationship assignment job anything I need to do I'm 450 feet for second kaboom the firing pins ignite pow I just come out of the burrow blazing but somehow at some point I hit the surface of the water and I And the water, the water's fear. The water's just fear. And I've lived with fear, like a suffocating fear all my life and I got so used to living with it that I didn't even know it was there. So I masked my ungenuine nature with false stuff in the front. There are a lot of tough guys in AA that are masking fear with their false bravado. There are a lot of us phony intellectuals in AA, the guys with big foreheads and glasses that are trying to throb it off like you've got some kind of knowledge that we don't have. And there are a Lotta people. We come in here with this mask that we wear, and that was all I had really to hide the fear, to hold back the fear. And so I drank through the next 12 years. I drank just like I drank that night at that party. I've come out of blackouts. You know, I'm the kind of guy that they hold mirrors under my nose when I'm drinking, you know, just to see if I'm still there. It was actually at first it wasn't bad. You know? It's kind of fun. You know when you first start drinking you start having blackouts and they're not really bad. I was standing in a party in Long Beach one time saying hello to people and all of a sudden, Santa Monica, you know, with my car keys in my hand going, wow. This is like molecular transport, you know? Long Beach, Santa Monica, reassemble. The only problem was that was the only time that it was that convenient. I was thinking in my head I could shave travel time, just clear it out. But it didn't work out that way. But I drink to the point where people throw me in the back of a pickup truck and drive me down a railroad track to try to wake me up. I drink. I like to drink. I like the way it makes me feel. It makes me feeling different. It makes you feel whole. It makes feel like there's a future that I can see and experience that I don't see and experienced when I'm sober. it makes and this sounds like a harsh word it sounds like an overly dramatic word too but I don't think it is when you think about it as little tiny bits expressed over a long period of time with a deepening concentration it's suffering it just it helps to alleviate the suffering that I would feel that day was some false sense of hope but the suffering gets filed away and the suffering gets pushed down and the suffering gets refiled and rejigged and it always leaks out somewhere. Always the anger and the frustration and the contempt for people and the sense of why bother? Why bother with this? Why do I even need this crap? I was confounded by my own ineptitude at how to do things. I couldn't get through college. I couldn'T get through anything. And it was all because when I'd start doing it, I'd get a whiff of my own fear and back away and run to the safest thing, you know? Run to the thing that was the most safe. And so for years I went on doing that. I got sicker and sicker. I drank more and more. And I got married thinking that by having a spouse that would complete me as a person, which sounds very romantic when you think about it in terms of poetry that, you Know, one and one make one. one. If one and one make one, you're pathetic. For me to look for another person to complete Pleat me is, ew, it's creepy. Especially when you know me because I defy completion. And so I would drink and I would get there, you know. And I got married. I married this lovely woman who, you knows, we were both about 25 and she was just a delightful human being. Her only problem was she loved me. and I loved her too as much as I thought I could until, I'm really good with relationships. I'm a really good advice on relationships until another person is introduced into the relationship and I kind of fold. But I loved this woman the best I could but you know on our honeymoon we'd go back to our room after dinner and I would tuck her into bed and then I'd go out and drink. I'd just go out to drink. I didn't think there was anything wrong with that. I need to express what's... I was so afraid of being a husband, I guess, that I just had to go out and pretend I was something else. Pretend I was a grown-up. Pretend i was a real guy, you know? And it was nonsense. It was just rubbish. And I didn't know that at the time. And I hurt that woman terribly. And we wound up getting a divorce about five years later. And she got me to go into therapy, which was really, really helpful. I'm not knocking therapy. I think therapy is really helpful for a lot of people. But it didn't work on my alcoholism. I wasn't neurotic. I heard someone speak the other night, and I wanted to talk to him about what he said. I used to have a therapist who would ask me about my dreams, and he really liked them, and he started writing them down. He said, you have the most non-neurotic dreams I've ever heard. And then he stopped charging me for sessions. He just had me come in and tell him about my dream. And I started to feel so guilty about not having a good dream to tell him, I'd make him up. And that's just the way it was. And therapy was not helpful at that point for my alcoholism. I saw this woman therapist for a while, and she told me one time, if you ever come in here smelling of alcohol again, I'm not going to treat you anymore. And that was my first alert, that it was bothersome to somebody. And I had this wife who would constantly say things like, we're going to have dinner soon. Why are you drinking? Or didn't you just have one? These questions that really, they're so, how do you answer a question like that? I know I just had one. I just Had a Breath, too. I think I'm going to take another one. Why don't you go in the next room and take three or four? and uh and this this woman her brother was her brother bob was a a terrible alcoholic but he drank like i did you know and uh he came over to our house one time was one of the first times probably second time i met him and he came Over to our House and and Bob and I started drinking and we were having a great time in the stereo going talking the talk and everything and and i look over and there's my wife giving me one of these now men know that this does not mean I want to call you in and compliment you on something. So she calls me into the bedroom. I go in there, and she says, with tears in her eyes, she goes, Bob had been in hospitals in rehab. There weren't that many rehabs in the early 1970s in that area for alcoholism, but he had been at rehabs and hospitals and all that stuff for drinking, and she said, stop giving Bob alcohol. Bob is an alcoholic. alcoholic. And I looked at her and said, with a straight face, Bob is no more of an alcoholic than I am. The problem here is you are a nag. Now, why don't you just back it up, sister, and let us have a little fun? Shut the door. You're sobbing in there as we just turned the stereo up and we had a great time. Two weeks later, Bob was dead and he drowned and he was drunk one day and went up to Lake Castaic and went into the water and they had to have a boat go out the next morning with police on it and drag the lake to find him and no one mentioned alcoholism then. I certainly didn't want to hear about it. He just had a bad swimming accident you know and no one said a word about it and he had a five-year-old daughter and a wife and and there was a bad scene he was 25 years old and I just went along like yeah I want to pick up his car with all his belongings in at work where he had died and drove it back and didn't say a word about it you know that didn't stop me a bit and uh in in June of 1981 actually Actually, in May of 1981, my wife wanted a divorce and I was distraught. You know, I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. And the therapy was going lousy and everything. I was peeing blood and I couldn'T tell anybody because you can't, you know, you just can't say to people, how are you doing? Oh, I'm just peeing a little blood, but other than that, I'M fine. You know,, my skin was falling off. I was sweeping out my bed in the morning. It was like I was decomposing and I'M still alive kind of thing. And I was having some physical, a lot of physical problems. Most of all, I just could not stop drinking, and I wasn't trying to stop drinking. Drinking was, I thought, the last thing that was my problem since drinking intermittently made me feel like it did that night in 1968 where I felt like I was there. Well, it still made me feels there for a while, but something was beating the hell out of me, and I didn't understand what it was, and that's why I was in therapy. And it wasn't getting to the problem, And so she suggested that I join this group that was going up to have a meditation weekend up in Montecito, which is just south of Santa Barbara. And I thought, oh great, you know, a meditation week. Yeah, that'll help. I'll go on this, I'll get some spirituality and then I won't feel so bad. So I go up there and I stop to get something to eat on the way up there and the person, the woman in the restaurant said, would you like a glass of wine or something, a drink with that? And I'd been drunk the night before, and I said, you know, because I knew there would be wine up at the meditation retreat. So I said no, not right now. I don't want to get pulled over and all that jazz. I've been pulled over too many times. Okay, so I go up to the meditation retweet. I get up there. About 80 people show up about the same time I do. I'm parked in there, andI go up where they're having the meeting, and she said, can I get you something to drink? I thought, now you're talking. Yeah, I'll have a glass of burgundy. If you got it. She laughed. She laughed, and she said, oh, we don't have any alcohol here. And I thought, this is a Catholic retreat center, right? If not you, who would have wine? I mean, she goes, oh no, we do not have alcohol at these things. Would you like some herb tea? And I though, no, I do not want any herb tea. Perhaps you could chop up some regular tea and I could sniff it or something, you know. Something that's going to get me perking, but not, no, I couldn't say that. I said, oh, really? And I look out the window and there's 80 cars behind my car because it was stacked parking and I couldn'T get out. And I started sobering up that night against my better judgment. And I thought, I can do this. I'll be all right. I can DO this. It's like lack of oxygen. I can handle this. And the next day and the next morning, we had a guided meditation in this room. And I don't know if any of you have ever been to therapy where you have that guided meditation where they play the lute music and a little flute in the background and we're lying on the floor in this home. And she said, okay, you're walking through a field. You know, she took us all through this scenario. And you're talking to a field and now you get to the meadow and you can feel the grass under your feet and you get get to a waterfall and you can see the water coming down the waterfall and you step up to the waterfall and you stepped into the water and it cleanses you and the water turns blue and it washes away your sorrow and the waterfall and the watercolor turns green and it brushes away your jealousy and the underwater turns red and it bushes away your anger and we went through like the entire Sherwin-Williams catalog law. And the water turns Swiss coffee. And all I'm thinking the entire time is, I have got to get out of here. I can't stand this. I'm laying on this floor. I could feel the shag carpet coming up through my shirt. And I know everybody, we were laying like spokes folks on a wheel around in this room. And I know everybody else was into it, and I just was going, I was out of my mind. I thought, no, no. And she goes, now I want you to step back from the water and I want você to look at the waterfall. And I want vocês to look through the water. You can see through it. And through that water you can see where you're going to be five years from today. Take a look at your life And for a split second, I looked through that damn waterfall and I saw myself hanging from my bathroom door at home with the cord from my robe around my neck, dead. Now, I don't know what anybody else was thinking or seeing in the waterfall. Something tells me there might have been children or jobs and stuff. And then she said after it was all over. And I saw that. I saw what was going on. I saw how that, and it just struck me. It horrified me. But it horrified my, and I was resigned to it at the same time. And I believe today, I believe that was a moment of clarity. Just a moment where, yeah, this is where you're going to be in five years. I was hitting it pretty hard. and I saw that and thought oh man no no no I can't do this what am I going to do what am i going to do she let us leave there and she goes now for the next five this is what every alcoholic likes to hear for the next five hours I want you to look at your life and see how you can reach the vision you saw in the water and I'm thinking to myself you know, I've got a better idea I'm going to put my face right down by the bumper of your car and you floor it I went out on the grounds the beautiful grounds at this retreat house and was wandering around out there and I sat down and I thought, this is all there is. I just should die. And I didn't want any drama. It wasn't dramatic. It wasn'T self-pitying at all. It was a real thought that maybe that is the solution to the way I feel right now. I think somewhere in the big book, because I can't quote the big look. I know the big books. I understand the big looks. I read the big ones. But I canít quote it. And I apologize if you want to hear quotations from the big one. But there is a part in the big book that says something about alcoholics who don't take care of the problem, wind up taking drastic measures, the ultimate choice of dying, I believe it is, or something to that effect. And I thought to myself at that point, I just want to be lifted out of this life. I just wanna be plucked out of here. I don't wanna have any drama. I mean, I've already had the drama about dying. I've all, I'm already, I mean if you're new or even not new and you have ever written your Academy Award acceptance speech and your funeral plans in the same afternoon, welcome to AA. I bounce like that too, but at that moment I thought, I just want to leave this world because I didn't mean to be the person I am. I know my parents had better things in mind for me and I didnít have any connection with my parents. I disengaged my friends. I disengage everybody. You hear people sometimes coming into AA and go, nobody liked me anymore, but I just cut everybody loose. It was hard to tell if anybody liked me anymore. I was just disconnecting all my friendships and disconnecting everything in order to drink and be the person that I felt I had to be. And I was alone, and I thought, just take me out of here. And at the moment I felt that sense of despair, I felt a concurrent sense that I was completely loved to the bottom of my soul, and I didn't know where that came from. I felt completely bathed in some kind of love for about 30 seconds sitting there. And when it evaporated, I thought, I've really gone crazy now. I'm really crazy. I've already lost my mind. And I walked around that place in shell shock. I cried for about the next 10 hours. And then I just left there later. I left the next morning. I just went up to the bunk area where I was sleeping and I just slept. And I leftthe next day and I drove home. and that day was the 11th of June of 1981 and that was the day I took my last drink or have taken anything since then and I got home and I thought of stopping at the market so I stopped there and I didn't buy booze I bought popsicles I don't know why I went home and started eating popsicles you know how alcoholics do anything I'm going through a box of popsicles like a seagull in a bait shop I'm just I'm goin' through them and about every half hour or I'd go in and barf up this melted rainbow and stare at it and go back out and do some more. And I was just, I was detoxing big time. And I detox the old-fashioned way at work. And I hate to disappoint anybody. I didn't go through rehab. I didn'T find out what the 38th chromosome that controls alcoholism is. All I knew is that I needed a drink right then. And then if I drank, I would wind up like I saw in that waterfall fall, and I can't kill myself, so I'm stuck. Now what? You ever reach that now what position, you're in a good place because I heard Gene Duffy talk. Gene was an old time AA member who was, he was a great guy, and he said one time at a meeting that I heard him speak at, he said there's a point in every alcoholic's life where they're sitting at the bar, and they're looking at a glass of whiskey and they're thinking, if I drink this, I'm going to die. And if I don't drink this I can't, I am not going to live. I can not live. Now what? And I had reached that sense of desperation. I didn't bring it on. And I'll tell you something, a lot of the times what keeps me from drinking even now is the sense and the belief that I could not recreate the sequence of events that happened to get me to Alcoholics Anonymous one more time. I came into AA by accident. I walked into AA and what happened was I went four days without a drink and I told my mother-in-law that I quit drinking that week and I'm doing really well. Phone's hammering against my glasses when I'm talking to her and I was hearing Steely Dan playing in the back seat of my car in my stereo and the stereo hadn't been hooked up for years that didn't stop me I kept hearing people in the back seat calling my name and I kept getting the imaginary gnats that congregate in your peripheral vision that kind of hang there while you're talking to people and you eventually have to turn to look at them and they go away until you go back to who you're speaking to and they're right back again And so all I knew to do was this, you know. And my mother-in-law called me and said, Debbie, your sister, Debbie is my sister-in law, Debbie needs a ride to an AA meeting. She just got out of the care unit down in Orange and she needs a drive to an AAA meeting. Can you give her a lift to a meeting on Sunday night? And I said, sure. Now, my own rights, Debbie should have been driving, really. Debbie was Bob's widow who fell over drowned. And she had 22 days of sobriety, and I picked her up in my car. I'd been separated from my wife for about 11 minutes. And I come pulling up, and there's Debbie looking like a million bucks. She got out of care unit. and she looked like she'd been completely transformed from the inside out. And I pull up in my Volkswagen, it was, it looked like I did. It had about, if you scratch the surface, there was very little left but primer on this thing. Headlights aiming at the raccoons in the trees that aren't there, and it was just a wreck. It didn't have a reverse on it, so I always had to park on a hill with no one in front of me so I could get it started in the morning, which seemed to be a lot easier than getting the transmission fixed, but you understand that. And so I said, okay, I'll give Debbie a ride to the meeting. So I went and picked her up and drove her to the meeting. We listened to Steely Dan on the stereo. And I pulled up in front of the meeting and I didn't know it. And this is really important to hear if you're new. Debbie had 22 days of sobriety. And she 12-stepped me in that car on the way to this meeting because I told her that I'd quit drinking. Like she had to guess. And so we pull up in front of the meeting, and I said, what time do you want me to come back and get you? And she said, why don't you come into the meeting with me? And I said with a straight face, because I'm not an alcoholic. Really. as I adjusted my sunglasses for the night time meeting and pulled down my deerstalker hat that I was taken to wearing she said something that just amazes me even today she said oh you don't have to be an alcoholic it's an open meeting and since you quit this week quit drinking maybe you'll hear something and they'll help you stay quit. And I thought, that sounds fair. I couldn't argue with that. It sounds fair to me. So I got out, parked the car with no one in front of me and went into the meeting and there were about 300 AA members in there and I did not feel like I was home. I felt odd in there. I felt like I just entered into a game of Loserama. now I'm twitchy and in a deerstalker hat and sunglasses in the back of a night time meeting you know and getting getting annoyed when people were coming up going are you new and my reaction was I am not new thank you I've got four days I thought I thought new meant that you had been drinking when you crossed the threshold coming into the room I have four days those are the hardest four damn days of my life so I would appreciate you not chuckling when I say I'm not new I've got four days that was hard you know and so they gave me phone numbers and one woman said you got a big book yet and I thought oh god I don't know if I have a big book I work in a bookstore we got a lot of big books in there just how big a book are you talking about perhaps your big book has a title I don't want to be too presumptuous here I've already got a clear drink so so she took me over to the literature table And the woman there said, you need a big book? I thought, I suppose so. And she said, well, it's $5 at the time. In 1981, it was $5. It's $6 now. Inflation's killing us. So she gave me the big book, and she said here's the book. And I said, how much is it? And she goes, five bucks. And I took my money out, and I had $3 in my pocket. And I say, I'll get it the next time I'm here, like never. And I started to put the money away, and she goes, that's okay. That's okay, and I'll tell you what you do. Here you go. Give me $2. I'll take the $2, the book is yours. If you want to pay back the rest of the money, pay it back, please. But consider it your book, and don't worry about it. And keep the other dollar and put it in the basket because you can't stay sober on somebody else's dime. And I thought, okay. So I got the big book, and I walked away from that table, and I felt worse than I felt when I went up there because I owed the IRS, I owed every credit card company in North America, I owed my ex-wife, I owed a man I worked for money and now I'm into AA for three bucks. This is a pool that has no bottom. I just keep swinging down So I sat down, and the speaker talked. And the speaker, his name was Ron. And I'll never forget him because he was from San Pedro, and he was a lawyer. That's all I know about him. I don't think I've ever seen him since then. And he gave a talk, though. And when he was talking, he talked about having his jaw wired shut in the Army because he got in a Jeep accident, flew over the top of the windshield and hit a tree, and it broke his jaw, all the pieces. And he had it all wired shut and he had a broken tooth in the front that he could sip booze through, through a straw. And somebody said to him, you better not do that because if you drink too much and you get sick and you have to vomit, you're going to suffocate because your jaws are wired shut. And he said, from that point on, I always carried a pair of wire clippers. Let me explain something to you. Everybody in the room laughed just like that, except me. Because I was sitting there going, finally, I've been here 45 minutes to an hour, finally someone is saying something that makes some sense. They're not talking about their higher power and a big book and all this stuff. and, you know, come up and get a chip and a hug. I don't want a chip and a hub. Unless you can slip me a ten or five or something in there, I don' t need a chip and a hud. My friend Eileen W. says she came to A.A. yelling, help me! And that's exactly what I was doing. I'm happy to hear what you think I think I should do, and I'll do anything to stay sober as long as I agree with it. And I was fighting everything in the room, and people didn't care. You know how that is. People, in fact, they gravitated toward me because I was so resistant to this, you know, I kind of laugh off everything. Oh, come over here, why don't you come out for coffee with us? I don't think so, I've got to take Debbie back. You know, and so that was my first experience at an AA meeting was hearing a guy who finally made some sense and everybody laughed at him. But Debbie said, you've got to come back next week because I'm getting a 30-day chip. And I want you to be here. Okay. So I picked her up again and drove her to the meeting. And Debbie got her 30-Day Chip and a hug. And she sat down and she told me that if I stuck around for 30 days, that I could get a chip. And again, I thought, really? Now, at this point, I hadn't had a drink in about two weeks almost. And I was really ripe then. I mean, really ripe. And I just kind of scoffed at it. I was like in the doctor's opinion when the doctor said that, you know, you may have come here to scoff. We hope you stay to pray or something to that effect. I was a scoffer. I scoff the entire time. But fortunately enough for me, I didn't scoff so much that it was able to mask my desperation or mitigate it one degree because I was the same desperate guy and I knew that you had something that I didnít have and I didnís know if I wanted what you had but I certainly didnít want what I had and so I kept coming back I went to the meeting every Sunday night like a commitment every Sunday I was at that meeting and Debbie took her chip that Sunday night and then the following Tuesday she got drunk And she didn't get back to AA for nine years after that. And my reaction to her drinking when I was told that she went out and drank was, first, I was shocked, and secondly, I felt I'd been abandoned in AA because she was the only person I knew in the room. And she left. And now, and this was a thinking, she gets to drink again. She got it. She got her chip. And now she gets To Drink Again. And there was something inside of me that I don't know where it came from that said, but you can't. I don'T know what, that was the anchor inside of me that kept me here was that feeling that she gets to drink again and I can't now. What do I do? I don' t know what to do. And somebody said, we' ve got to go to more meetings. I thought, I can only get to one meeting. I can ONLY get to Sunday night. I've got a big card I' ve not full. My dance card is way overloaded. That was a lie. But, you know, I was now in publishing. I had deadlines. I was a receiving clerk in a bookstore and I was working there. And so I couldn't get to more meetings. And I went to a meeting one night and a guy named Keith Carpenter was talking. And Keith gave a great talk and the people there made me go up and thank him, you know. They were saying, get up and thanks the speaker. And I go, well, here's an interesting note. the third speaker I heard at that meeting was Chuck Chamberlain and I didn't understand a word that man said and he would giggle the whole time he was talking you know half measures avail us nothing you think half measures avail us 50% they give you nothing I'm looking at the people around me going is anybody picking this up and so they made me go up and thank Chuck and I didn't understand him how am I going to thank him for what I'm sorry I didn' t understand you but thank you so I go up to him and I get right up to them and he he said he grabbed my hand and he goes how long are you sober and I said 20 days and he says I love you and he grabbed me put his arms around me and he kissed me right on the mouth and that's where I caught alcoholism Chuck Chamberlain I started to run a little fever that night and the next day I was an alcoholic, I'll tell you so I go back the next week and it's Keith Carpenter and they made me go up and thank Keith so I thanked him like this and Keith said how long are you sober? And I said, I don't know, 27 days, 27, and he goes, how many meetings are you going to? I go, I go to four. And he goes just be going to seven meetings. And I say, you know, four meetings a month is about all I can handle. He goes, I'm talking about seven meetings a week. And I says, that's a lot of meetings. And he says, how may nights did you drink? And I go okay, seven I guess. And he said, here's a meeting. First he said, why don't you go to more meetings? And I said, because I have to drive home. I worked in Santa Monica and I lived in Anaheim. It's about an hour drive. By the time I get home, it's 830 and the meetings have already started and I can't walk in late. God, I've never done that before in my life. And he said well then here's a meeting that's right by where you work in Santa Monica. Why don't You come to this meeting? I got the address and I'm looking at it and he goes, starts at 830. At the time it started at 8 30. I'll be looking for you there so that next Wednesday night I had to go to the meeting because I knew this guy would be looking for me so I show up at the meeting and I get there about 8.29 and sit in the back of the room and I couldn't find Keith anywhere but I sat next to this woman named Alice I'll tell you a story about Alice Alice you guys know Alice Alice is this little black lady who was she was nuts she was having Vietnam flashbacks and she had never been to Vietnam And she would tell me about them in these really, I mean, like street versions of it. My hair is curling, my remaining hair. So I'm sitting next to Alice and Alice is sitting there at the break and she goes, how long are you sober? And I went, I think I've got 45, 40 days now. And she had about 35 so she didn't like that at all. And she goes you've got a sponsor? And I said no. And she says you better get you one. I thought, well, I'll get me one when I'm ready to, thank you. Somebody had already suggested I get a sponsor. I said, what do I need a sponsor for? And they said, to help take you through the big book. And now... Oh, I understand. This really deep metaphysical text. I need someone to help me with this. I graduated from college with a journalism major. I need someone to help me unlock the Jay Walker analogy. Someone to really key me in to the double meaning of G-Ma Ain't it grand the wind stopped blowing? Or give me three reasons why I should care about Mr. Brown. And if you don't know who Mr. brown is, shame on you. So Alice is telling me again, he's going to get you a sponsor. And I say, yeah, I will, I Will. Where do you go to meetings? And I said, I just go out and mumble, mumble. And she said, you got something to write on? And I gave her a check deposit slip because I figured I wasn't going to be using that for a while. And on the back of this check deposit clip, in one of those drafting pens that has a point on it like a razor, like a needle point, She wrote the directions to every Pacific Group meeting from the driveway of where I worked, Monday through Sunday. Pull out of the driveway. She knew where I was. I told her where I work. She'd make a left on Monday night. Then you go down and make another left on 20th Street. You drive all the way down 20th street. And she gave me all the directions on here in this little deposit slip that I carried around in my wallet for about six months. I wish I had it. I tell you, I wish i had it, and she wrote it all down. So the next night I go, I get out the deposit slip because a bunch of people came up to me at the Wednesday night meeting and they said, we'll see you tomorrow night. It's over at the Century Federal Building over in Santa Monica. Just be there. So I went to that meeting, and people took me out for coffee, and Alice was there. She kind of swung her way through the crowd, surprising me. Here's Alice, and she goes, so, you get you a sponsor? I go no, I don't have one yet. She goes, you better get one. Alice. Alice. So I went to the Friday night meeting, which was a men's stag, so I figured I was safe from Alice. And Saturday night, again, Alice slithering through the crowd, you know, and Sunday night. Well, the Monday, the next Monday, I'm driving to work on the San Diego freeway and I was moving along in a pretty good clip in this little Volkswagen and the person in front of me just slammed their brakes on. I mean, just boom like that. And I hit my brakes as hard as I could and went, and I thought, maybe this is working. Maybe this, and I looked in my rearview mirror and the guy behind me is talking to somebody in his car and he looks up and boom, accordions my car into the car in front of me. He gets out, the other guy gets out. Neither of them speak English. I'm standing on the side of the road and now, now I'm walking back and forth going, oh man, oh man. You know, I'm feeling like a rain man. I was going back before I couldn't think of what I'm going to do. What am I going to be able to do? I don't have any phone numbers. I didn't ask anybody for their phone numbers? I Don't Know What To Do. I can't call. I'm stuck on the freeway. And now the freeways all stopped because everybody's going by to see who the dingbat is that got accordioned in the accident. in it. And I'm walking back and forth and I'm sweating, and these two guys are arguing in Spanish, and I'm panicking. And, I look up at this wave of cars going by. The looky-loos are all going by, and in one of the cars is Alice waving. And, I surrendered. I just thought, give up! I give up, you know? And, so within two days, I had a sponsor sponsor. This sponsor, I got this guy named Bill who walked me through everything. He gave me, he sat me down and said, if you want me to sponsor you, I have to give you some specific directions. And the first thing I want to ask you is, are you willing to do anything to stay sober? And I said, yes. And he said, you have to be willing to not argue with anything I ask you to do. Okay. And I Said, sure. So he goes, okay, I want you to go to meetings. I want You to get there early. I Want you to go to seven meetings a night. and I don't want you to get commitments at your meetings. I want you read the big book, but not alone. Because he talked to me, and he apparently knew I would be arguing with it while I was reading it. So he said, only read it at a book study when other alcoholics are around because I don' t want you looking at it by yourself. And I want to go out for coffee with other alcohols and get phone numbers from the guys and shake as many hands as you can shake and ask people their name. Oh, man, because I do not want to shake hands. I don't like people. I don' t want to be around here. Anyway, it's just really everything I can do to show up and now you got me doing all this crap. Okay, I can't do that. So I go back to the meeting. I gave them a schedule of the meetings I would go to. I'm going around shaking everybody's hand and all this nonsense. And lo and behold, I wasn't having a spiritual awakening really soon. I was a little annoyed because I was doing all the stuff. I had a coffee commitment. I cleaned the coffee pots. I didn't get to make them, make the coffee. I had an ashtray commitment. I had all these different commitments. And I was waiting for the steps to start. I said to Bill, when are we going to add about seven months? I said, when do we start doing the steps? You know, I want to do the steps. I hear everybody else talking about it. I'm doing three. I'm going four. You know somebody spot me. I'm gonna do a five. You know it's just like they're doing some calisthenics. And I said, when are we going to start doing the steps? And he looked at me and he goes, what are you talking about? And I says, I want to do the steps. I've heard from people that the Pacific Group doesn't do the steps. And I'm starting to believe it. He said, wait, wait. Are you calling me every day? I said yeah. And do you do what I ask you to do, right? You're going to meetings? Yeah. Shaking hands? Yeah. You getting phone numbers? Well, yeah. You calling other alcoholics during the day? Yeah, I call them. Just call them and ask how they're doing like you said. You went out for coffee because I see you at coffee. You're doing your commitments, and do you like doing them? And I said, not always. And he goes, well, what do you do the nights you don't want to do them? And I say, well I go do them because you said to do em whether I like it or not. And he says, what part of the first three steps do you think you're not doing? Because they are a lot more than theory sport. They are tangible actions. You can't just sit around making a decision without taking an action afterward. word. Once you've made the decision that you want to stay sober, you have to do something. The steps are not meant to be set down and examined. They're meant to be used. They're utilized. You know? And we got all kinds of AA in LA. We got meetings where they sit down and analyze the words and what Bill really meant by although. I'm not kidding you. Some of the meetings, it's just short of throwing down chicken bones and feathers. Boogie, boogie, boogey. Let's channel Dr. Bob. He was a god. He was an angel. Let's talk about his sainthood. Look at these guys. These are not saints. These are guys. If you want to nominate somebody for sainthood in AA, let's nominate that last guy Bob operated on before he got sober. I had a colonoscopy about a year ago. You know, the last thing I want to hear when I'm going under the anesthetic is a crack of a beer can. but these steps are meant to be used in AA where it's safe to screw them up because you can't do them right in here if anyone tells you they're doing the steps right don't take a ride home with them we all do them wrong we are all immense failures at being humble and humbly asking and making adequate amends like I'm sorry what else do you want from me but you know what even if you say that to somebody I'm sorry I smashed your car now what that's not adequate but you can do it again and you do it until you get it right but there is no failure in here except drinking there is not failure in AA except drinking and even then you can come back we want you to come back just because you drank I have a secretary of a meeting our pacific group meeting a few years ago and some woman came up to me and she said, Charlie, the man next to me has been drinking. And I thought, well, we're not going to let that element creep into our AVN. You let me handle this. We don't want any drunk people in our Alcoholics Anonymous fellowship. But you really can't screw this up here. And you know what? This is where we go to get the comfort and support that Sharon was talking about last night, that where else do you get somebody like Maurice Zolotow to comfort you? I went up to Maurice ZOLOTOW, who was an esteemed writer in his day, and I went over to him with my bookstore apron on pretty much and said, you know, I've always wanted to be a writer. And Maurice looked at me and said,"Then write something!" And he turned around and walked away. That's like, you now, I'm really feeling like staying sober. work, then do something. What are you telling me for? I don't care what you intend to do. I want to hear what you did and how it worked out. I even want to hear if it didn't work out because it's okay here. The fear of failure is powerless in here amongst other alcoholics because we understand what you're doing and we understand why you'redoing it and weunderstand what's at stake. And that's That's why we support everybody in here who's trying this thing. And I heard a woman a couple of months ago at our meeting who said, you know, I'm an alcoholic but my drug of choice is heroin. And I thought, you know what's your drug of no choice? Because if it's not alcohol you've got nothing to say to me. Not that I have any disrespect for you but I don't get it. I need to be where the primary purpose is It is people who drank like I did who understand what's at stake for me. And it's not an us versus them mentality. It's just that I don't have any place else to go. This is my home. This is where I can safely screw up and this is where people taught me how to get in touch with a higher power and I'll tell you how. I did all those commitments for eight months, doing it, doing it. And not having a spiritual awakening. Not having one. And I heard some woman at a meeting get in. She came in one time and she was, you know, I haven't been to a meeting in seven months but I came back today day, and I had a spiritual awakening. I thought, what? I'm folding cords, mopping floors, emptying trash cans, cleaning out ashtrays, and i got nothing. This bitch comes back for one day and has a spiritual opening. What kind of God is this? Where is this God? This isn't fair. You know, I went to Bill. I literally left work that day and went to see Bill and said, what is it? When am I going to have a spiritual awakening? A wise one. He was my response. He said, I really don't know. I'll tell you one thing. If you keep doing what you're doing, it's going to happen and you will not have any mistake about it when it does. Okay. So I continue to say my prayers. I continue to talk to my bedspread. I continued to surrender to a God I didn't believe in. I continues to do all this stuff. And Bill, uh, was right. One day I was standing at Ohio street on a Sunday night mop on the floor with two other losers who were still still sober, and I'm mopping the floor and I stopped for a second and I was looking at the people lined up to thank the speaker and there were about 100 people in line and I just standing thinking of nothing, just kind of stopped for second and I am looking at faces in the line and it occurred to me here, not up here but right down here that I knew every single one of them by name and I liked them. what a shock for someone who doesn't like people and who doesnít want to be involved and I felt as comfortable and as full of hope as Iíve ever felt in my life in the midst of these people standing with a mop in my hand and I thought if I could be transported to any other place in the world right now I wouldnít go I just want to stand here and feel this feeling forever forever and I left and I called Bill and told him what happened and he said you had a moment of grace That's what a moment of grace feels like. Don't forget that, because you're going to find more if you keep opening yourself up to them. And I did. I did all the steps. I did an inventory with Bill. I read it. Bill walked me through my divorce. He walked me though a lot of different problems I was having, a lot different things that seemed catastrophic at the time that now seem like footnotes in a life. And like they teach us in AA, your life starts to get better and bigger if you just stop being afraid of what's happening I I wound up applying to be a teacher because it was offered to me and I didn't want to take it I wanted to talk to somebody about it first I wanted two intellectually I wanted to take the job but I couldn't so I called Bill and said someone offer me a job to teach at this college teach English and I was in grad school cuz he asked me to go back to grad school so I could have the freedom to complain about my current job and so I did and he said if you if you want to if you you want to do better, take the job. And I said, well, I thought I'd stay in school for about a year and really get to know my subject better. And then all I heard was, errrr. So I went back and said, okay, I'll take the job. And I became a teacher at Santa Monica College where I worked in the bookstores in the morning and taught English part of the time. And then the next year, I applied to be a teacher in a Catholic school. I wound up being a high school teacher, and I did that for seven years. And the fear of before I went in to teach high school kids I was terrified and I'm sitting in my house in my apartment one night and Bill called and said when do you start and I said tomorrow and he goes let me come over I'll talk to you so he comes over and he says get some coffee that was always his direction get some coffe so we got some coffee and he sat down and he said I bet you're really afraid and I say yeah I'm a little uncomfortable he goes those kids could eat you alive that's what I've heard he says you may go in there tomorrow and find out that you really should not be a teacher I thought yeah he said that or you can choose not to do it and wonder if you could when you're 70 years old how do you want to live your life he said when you go in that classroom tomorrow you've got everybody in our group everybody in AA who knows you with their hand at the small of your back when you come when you get up there to face those kids that's what brought you to that moment that's why you're there it's not you it's grace that's brought you there so go in there with the comfort of grace and don't be afraid and I went in and did that I did it for seven years I love these kids I love these high school kids I've got some of them as Facebook friends now they sought me out they're in their 40s now some of em and it's just you know their life I didn't ruin them that much and then I I got an opportunity to write for a living, and I took it. And I started doing things differently. And I was afraid the whole time. I was terrified the whole thing. But as I was taught by my sponsor and by Alcoholics Anonymous and by doing the steps, that the fear is egotistical. It's just a sense that I might not get something that I want or I might get something that I don't want and just ignore it and walk through it. So I would just have to literally force myself into doing it. And I wound up becoming a book editor and writer writer. And I worked with a guy who I idolized as a kid. I idolize this guy who was a director and I wound up getting a call that he needed someone to help him edit a book. And they called my office and said, would you go over and work with this guy on this thing? And I thought, ah, okay. So I went over, what am I going to tell this guy? He was 85 years old. He had an Academy Award. He was a legend. And Iím sitting down talking to him and we had a really nice meeting and he was very nice to me. And then I got up and I walked I walked out of there, and I'm walking across, going back to my office, and I am dressed in a suit and tie. And I am feeling comfortable, and feeling even with the world. And I'm feeling like there is no way that I could have gotten here. It occurred to me that if I could've seen myself walking across this place right now, dressed as I am, if you could take this scene and shoot it back to me 30 years and show me what I was going to be 30 years from now, I would have screwed it up because I would have been trying to get there and I can't get there from here I have to be led there from here my mother always told me when I was lost in the store she said if you ever get lost in the storer stand in one place and I will find you if you keep running around looking for me we're going to miss each other but you stay in one place and I will come find you and the same thing applies to my spiritual life I can not go shooting around looking for God in everything when I am in crisis and I need God's help, I have to sit still and hope that he finds me. That I can clear out enough of the resistance to just do it. And sometimes that clearing out and sometimes that relief from resistance comes from you. It doesn't come from some big thing that comes down from the sky. It comes from people in AA who go, let me share something about my life that I did with that. And it changes. I got laid off four years ago despite the fact that the world is clamoring for 55-year-old men, I started working freelance. I'm doing it. I don't know how. I'm terrified, but I'm going to do it. And I met a woman and I got married and that failed miserably and I have these two beautiful children and I just take a couple of seconds because I know I've kind of blabbed on, but my kids have had a tough time in the last year. Their mom was sober in AA for a while And she, a year ago last April, she drank after 15 years of not drinking and tried to commit suicide. And so I got them overnight full-time as a single dad at the time. And Louise stepped right in. My girlfriend stepped in, and she just really got right behind me and said this is going to be okay, you're going to work this out. And we got things organized. I had people in AA coming out of the woodwork. Just like, I'll tell you, Sharon was one of the people that saved my bacon during my divorce worse because I came to a meeting one night and I was going to kill this woman. I was just fit to kill. And I came into our Saturday night meeting and I don't know why I came. I just walked in there and my eyes were spinning like cheap fireworks, you know. And then I go in there and there's Sharon and she walks across the room and she goes, why don't we go for a walk? And she looped her arm around mine and we just went for awalk around the block and I just told her what was going on and she I knew, I knew Sharon had been through this with a previous husband and had walked through it and I just needed somebody to hang on to, just to hang onto. And Sharon was the one. And another thing that Sharon did for me was that she taught me how to make amends to my mother in the same way that she made amends to her dad. I followed. She didn't tell me directly. She spoke at a meeting and I heard her say it and I tried to do it with my mom and I did the exact same thing except I didn't notify my mother because I'd made announcements to her before that I hadn't followed through on. I paid her back all of her money in the samelay you did. I sent her a note every week the sameway you did and I wound up being the executor my mom's will when she died, and I'm not the kind of guy that you want to entrust any money to. And my mother and I had a great relationship when she died, and that's because of Alcoholics Anonymous and the program that I was given from someone like Sharon. So anyway, I have my children now. I'm remarried, and my wife and I have a good, sober home. And my life is good. And I'll tell you something. I know there are a lot of people in here right now who are afraid, and I know that there are also a lot more people in this room and I think there are I know there are a lot of people here who are looking for something to try to take away whatever it is they're experiencing right now. The answer is the person sitting next to you. The answer isthe person in the hallway. The answeris in some of the meetings. The answerist at coffee. The answerists all around you. I heard a woman at the International Convention in San Diego one time standing on the street screaming, I miss my bus to the meeting and I'm trying to get to all these meetings and I can't get to every single workshop I want to go to and I feel like I'm missing the convention and a guy yelled this is the convention right here on the street talking to each other have some coffee welcome to AA let's have a meeting thanks for having me I'm grateful to be here thanks a lot