Alcoholism as a Simple Disorder of Emotional Health – Don G.

This recording is part of the Northern California Tape Library about alcoholism and was recorded on Saturday, May 22, 1982, at Sacramento, California, at the 25th Anniversary Banquet of the Central California Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. The Speaker, Don Gates, of Studio City, California. Please observe the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous and do not play this recording for entertainment or commercial purposes. And please, do not break the anonymity of the speaker or any A.A. member at any public level. The original record and this copy were both made by Bart Daniel at 1332 St. I. N. S. Way, Sacramento, California, zip 95816. There was some background noise in this tape caused by activities in another room that could not be eliminated. It is a privilege to be part of this fellowship where so many of us have been gone before to pave the way for us. I would like to introduce our speaker for this evening, Don Gee from Studio City. Good evening, everyone. My name is Don Gee, an alcoholic. This is a very awkward room in which to talk because we're separated so far. The only people who ever stay sober or achieve salvation when I speak are seated right here. and I'm particularly discouraged by it tonight because I feel such sorrow for those of you who are seated near that sounding board back there. I was out in the hall a few moments before this started and there were two guys standing out there, red of face, thick of tongue, blurry of eye, clutching glasses And one of them said to the other, we're going to have a great time tonight. And somebody here asked me, he said, who are those people? And I said, I don't know, but they're sure optimists. And I mean this quite sincerely. If anybody back against that wall has the courage as well as the desire to pick up your chairs and come forward here, I would be delighted to stop for any length of time required to do it because that must be murder back there. That is known as the last shall be first and the first shall be last maneuver. It's not that I'm going to say anything profound tonight, I am not. A number of people have mentioned they heard tapes of the last time I was up here some ten years ago, and I have learned nothing. I have had no spiritual breakthroughs since then, and as a result, I'm still sober. And I am delighted, however, to be here, and I am going to try also not to spend too much time dwelling on what I used to be like. Most of you are already familiar with vomiting. Diarrhea is a way of life. And I am in a manic phase where everything has been going so well, I would much rather touch upon that. Of course, it's mandatory that I say something about why we have joined together, some word about the demon rum, but not a great deal, because I've never really believed in this idea of qualification. qualification. Somebody here mentioned he said you should qualify a little bit, and it's true that alcoholism is gaining in stature each year. We've hardly had a White House that hasn't had one or two members in it recently. But nonetheless, it still isn't the way to get ahead. In other words, if a man tells me he's an alcoholic, I really don't think he's going to lie about it. Why would he say a thing like that if it weren't true? You know, if someone tells me he has a social disease, I don't say prove it, fella. Let's see it. So there really isn't a great deal of point in qualifying a man wouldn't lie about a thing like that. It is true, though, however, we are gaining in stature. I don' t know why I said that about the White House, but the last time I was speaking down in Long Beach, Billy C. was sitting up in the front row and it disturbed me slightly because I got to thinking, you know, some of us have a difficult time in making amends, but imagine what it's going to be like to Billy, you know, to go to somebody and say, Jimmy, I'm sorry I cost you the presidency. He didn't, of course, but he didn't help, I'll tell you. But under the guise of telling what they used to be like, people describe what happened to them, you know and there's quite a distinction between those two things when i was new in the program i used to tell a lot of things about my drinking career because in those days i thought that when i drank i did things in retrospect i see i did not they just happened to me i don't think i ever planned an evening the way it went certainly not a lifetime as i mentioned earlier i never walked into some consular's office and said i think i'd like to major in vomiting with a minor in diarrhea. I never planned an evening the way it went. I hear people get up and say, I can't blame the things I did on drinking. And I always think, poor devils, good Lord. Because I sure can. I don't believe I ever planned an evening the way that it went? I don'T believe I EVER said to myself, well, let's see, it's Friday night, what'll I do? Well, I'll kill that pint that's here in the house, and then I'll go out to buy some more, and since I've canceled the insurance on the car, I'll total it. That sounds like a wise start. On the way to the hospital, the attendant will rule me so I'll have no identification and they'll throw me in general hospital for 24 hours. But I'll get out and come home and cuff another jug on the way and terrify the wife and children on Sundays. Now, maybe what you did while you were drinking you intended to do and planned it that way. Maybe having an officer spread your arms and legs was the highest form of social intercourse you knew, but I never really cared a great deal for it. Overly sensitive, perhaps, but... When I drank, I was a complete slave to booze, though I didn't know it. It was like Aladdin and his lantern. When I rubbed the magic bottle, a genie came out, except instead of my telling it what we were going to do, it told me what we Were Going To Do. And sometime during the evening, you would say to me, Don, why don't we? And I'd say, that sounds reasonable. And go off and do something I never even thought of. Now, what has happened to me since I have been on the program is far more fascinating. Oh, I know I should say something about... I just feel compelled to say something about my drinking years, and yet they were so utterly boring in many respects. Somebody said if you tell a story about so-and-so. You know, that's the trouble with competing with your tapes. People know parts of your story and can correct you. But I'll tell this one story and that'll be enough of my drinking. I used to drink largely to relax. And on this particular occasion I'd been relaxed about four days. and i awakened drenched with perspiration having a nightmare dream of dante's inferno imps savagely poking me with hot barbs and hot coal smoldering about me and i lurched to my feet and shook my head trying to figure out what was going wrong and I looked down at the couch and I saw that I had relaxed on the couch apparently and my family had gone to bed without me and I had apparently relaxed with a cigarette in my hand because there was a small hole in the top of this couch from which a spire of smoke was emanating and I realized that what had happened was I had gone asleep with this cigarette in my hands or my mouth and it had burnt through into the matting, the tacking inside, where for lack of oxygen it didn't catch fire but the coals had slowly spread until they encompassed the whole bed. And it wasn't that there was anything wrong with me or my drinking, it was simply that I was being barbecued. And having recognized that, I relaxed a little bit but I knew I had to do something about it and so I went and got a pitcher of water and carried it over and tried to pour the pitcher into this tiny little hole and all it did was produce a rather spectacular cascade onto the carpet so I knew more drastic measures were called for so I got a butchered knife and I came back and I slashed the couch from one end to the other opened it up exposing the glowing embers and then I drenched them all in the healing balm of the water and it did indeed subdue them, put them out but it also filled the room with acrid black smoke and I remember standing there with my eyes watering looking at that slashed and sodden mess and I realized that almost certainly my wife was going to notice it she was a very sharp-eyed woman there was little there was a little that passed her can, I'll tell you and I knew that if she saw it She would probably be sufficiently exasperated that in a moment of thoughtlessness, she would say something cruel. Something that would hurt me, that would attack my manhood and that she would later regret. She was known to do that. You know, she would sometimes say something unkind like, you drunken son of a... And I wanted to spare her that. And so I thought, what will I do? I thought, well, I'll just get the couch out of here. I figured that she might remember there had been something on that side of the room, but on the other hand, you know, out of sight, out-of-mind. The only thing is it isn't quite as easy to move a dead couch when you should be in a hospital. But with that Herculean strength that comes only to the panic-stricken alcoholic, I somehow managed to get it onto my shoulder and hit it out onto the porch. And it was a rather small balcony we had on the second floor of the complex at that time. There were columns there, and I almost beat myself to death trying to make the turn. You know, a caram shot off those pillars. And I got down into the patio, and I realized that I hadn't thought too far ahead. There really is very little place to put a couch in the middle of an apartment complex patio, and I was standing there. As I say, I should have been in a hospital. Instead, I'm holding a couch. And I remembered a creek about five miles away, so I lurched to my car and threw the couch on top of it and got in and started driving. By this time, it was 6, 6.30, 7 in the morning, and there were people on the corners around bus stops with their briefcases and lunch pails. I don't know how they stay up that late, but they were out there. And in all my drinking career, the only thing I ever wanted was dignity. I didn't particularly object to disaster as long as I could meet it with dignity. and as I drove along I noticed that these personages on the corners their heads turned and followed me as I passed you know and I I thought God it doesn't take much to draw a crowd in California until I happened to pass an auto dealership that had a rather dusty window that acted like a mirror and I got a picture of what they were looking at. Here was a car being driven by a guy with a four-day growth of beard, Natalie attired in a bathrobe, and on top of his car was a couch that previously, while stationary, had lacked oxygen enough to take fire, but moving at thirty miles an hour the wind was coming through it like a billows and there were 40 feet of flame straight up. and that was before I began to have trouble with my drinking. But now, it's obvious I didn't do that, though it did happen to me. And so to tell you a number of escapades like that would not enlighten you one iota as to what I was like. What I was liked was like every newcomer I ever met in my life. A kind, honest, gentle, sweet, loving person who knew that they had been born in a troubled time when nation did make war on nation brother did take arm against brother even the gays were acting up and here were we with an answer and they wouldn't listen like one of our ex-presidents used to say come let us reason together let us do it my way and they won't do it and i have never met a newcomer who wasn't a good honest type You see, alcoholism, that's I guess why I've stopped telling so many stories about drinking, is that alcoholism has to be, without question, the simplest disorder ever to have afflicted mankind, the most easily recognizable, instantaneously identifiable, and treatable that's ever been known. Really. I mean, the very name alcoholism gives you a strong clue as to what the problem is. seriously suppose you didn't have a college education what would you think caused alcoholism alcohol right but now if you have been to college certainly if you haven't master's degree of any sort you're going to get the wrong answer you're not going to be able you're coming up with bowel training failure to close an Oedipus triangle the decline of petty bourgeois religion The decadence of capitalism. Down in L.A., there was an article once that it was caused by smog, drove people into the bars out of the streets and let clear their eyes. Now, the one thing that isn't suspected is booze. Now, alcoholism is caused by alcohol. If there was no alcohol, there would be no alcoholics on the face of the earth, identifiable as such. There'd be a lot of funny people hitting, grabbing, and so on, but that's going on among the non-alcoholics. i have never met an alcoholic to have a problem that is not shared by the rest of mankind our book says the only thing we have in common one with each other that we do not have in common with the rest OF MANKIND is the phenomenon of craving that results from taking the first drink we have of course psychotics because there's a great many of them out there nine out of ten of them are not alcoholics. We have sociopaths, particularly around the Venice groups in L.A. But there are nine out of 10 sociopathies who don't have the phenomenon of craving after taking their first drink. We have neurotics in every hue on the emotional spectrum. And there are nine others just like them who don t have the phenomenon of craving. It is very important for me to recognize this because as long as I thought alcoholism had something to do with my disciplinary abilities, with my emotional health, then I thought I could whip it. I could beat it. When I realized that there was nothing whatsoever that would put me in a condition where I could drink again, then it was somewhat vain to continue to pursue it. But alcoholism doesn't care what you do for a living. It's no respect or race, creed, color. You know, we haven't had 10 guys walk on the face of the moon yet. Two of them are in AA. You know, and they check those people fairly close. See, alcoholism is caused by drinking, and the cure to it is instantaneous. If you have the ability to control the movement of your elbow, eternal sobriety is yours. Nobody's going to put it in your mouth for you. Now, maybe there are some here who are so far gone their arm reaches out spastic-like occasionally and hurls things into their mouth. But assume you can fend it off. Sobriety is yours. That's all there is to it. I was down at a clubhouse in Texas a number of years ago, and they had a sign up there along with the other pusillanimous platitudes, those impossible like easy does it, first things first, live and let live, two impossible suggestions in one short sentence. but along with those they had one up there that said if you want to quit drinking you're going to have to quit drinking and I thought that's the dumbest thing I ever saw even in the state of Texas where stupidity is a way of life and but the more I reflected on it I suddenly realized good lord as is so often true in the great Southwest, they have captured the heart of this program. They have distilled the wisdom of our book into one short line. By God, if you want to quit drinking, you're going to have to quit drinkin'. And once you do that, everything else is fine. And it took me some time to grasp that. I had trouble with the program. You know, I would come in and I would have trouble and they would tell me, Don, what you've got to do is get more spiritual. And I would get so spiritual I would hardly touch ground, and I'd still have trouble. And they'd say, well, you've got to get involved with a newcomer. And I would get involved with them. I'd rip them off the bar stools, ready or not, and I'd still have trouble. And they say, you'd have to get into the steps, and I would plumb into the steps, and I would still have trouble. And then one day I decided to quit drinking. I haven't had any trouble since. Now, a fellow asked me here just before the meeting is it true that we have to all do the program the same way well if by you mean not drinking yeah true but as far as everything else goes i have no idea why meaning the psychodynamics of why the program works when i was new i strove to find this it would disturb me to see somebody staying sober the wrong way i'd rather see you in a drunkard's grave than staying sober the wrong way. Because if you were staying sober in a fashion different than I, and I was so new, I wasn't certain of my own sobriety, it was a threat. It disturbed me. Now, I don't give a how you're working your program. If you're staying sober, that's the only way I have to judge you. You can judge yourself by how happy you are in doing it. But I don'T care how you stay sober anymore. In fact, I DON'T know. It is a mystery to me, the people who stay sober and those who don't. I have seen people sober on this program continually for many, many, many years that as near as I can tell have no justification for continuing to live. Some of the most rotten SOBs I know in this world are on this show on this programme staying sober. We have a guy down in Hollywood as near As I Can Tell his sole source of income is defrauding newcomers. But the program says you turn your will and your life over to God, he'll take care of you. You won't starve to death. I'd always assumed you were supposed to get the money honorably. Hell, it doesn't say that. The honorary trustee of the North Hollywood Clubhouse robbed 13 banks cold sober. God, were we proud. We had a guy down there who used to pitch quite a bit. He'd talk about how he robbed a bank once when he was drinking. He wrote a note that said, Give me all your money. Signed his own name to it and gave it to the teller. Drove home by a circuitous route and the police were there when he got there. But this guy, all by himself... Well, that's not true. That one newcomer he was working with. but the two of them got 13 banks. Cold silver. He didn't get drunk. You see, the thing is that all we are required to do is be as honest as we are capable of. If you are rationalizing something, then you don't know it's wrong. A rationalization is something that deceives the person doing it. If you're not deceived by it, hell, it's just a flat-out lie and you can't do it. No, we always think we are doing right. I have never met a bad man. I never met an Iago, someone who said, I'm going to build my life four square on the rock of chicanery and deceit. See, I am going to be untrustworthy, a leech upon society. People don't talk like that. Everybody I ever met was a good man. I had a client once chase his wife across the street, shoot her six times in the back. I said, why did you do that? And he said, I did it for the sake of the children. Well, it's really hard to get down on a good father. You can do anything, you know, you can stay sober doing anything you like as long as it doesn't occur to you that it is wrong. In other words, you could commit adultery seven nights a week if you were considerably younger than I am. and stay sober if it didn't occur to you that it was wrong. But once it dawns on you that this might not be the most appropriate way to treat with your family, then it doesn't do any good to cut it down to twice. You've got to cut out. But this guy, they got 13 banks. Now he did not think he was doing anything wrong. He wrote me from Walla Walla Penitentiary. You know, and he said, Don, it's going to be very hard for me to do the years these judges have given me. Surrounded as I am by criminals. He said, as you know, Don. I'm not a thief. Intended to give it back. He wanted to save the paperwork, I guess. Of making a loan. But I wrote back and said, what are you talking about? Jesse James didn't get 13 banks. and they're still singing ballads about Jesse. You know, what are you talking about? But nonetheless, it was an inspirational thing, really, because I remember when they finally caught them. And it went on for months. They were called the Mutt & Jeff Bandits. They wrote them up in Playboy magazine later. When they finally got caught, when they caught them, they'd had the FBI, the Treasury Department, Chief Parker was the chief of police down there then. They'd all had their computers going trying to find some modus operandi so they could stake it out. They couldn't get them. and they finally decided it was a professional gang flying in from Chi, hitting and then getting out. And when they caught these guys, Parker was just furious. He said, how could you have done it? How could you have tied us up like that and gotten 13 banks? You're punk amateurs. You've never committed any crimes. How could you possibly have done it? And it was inspirational to hear them answer, we just turned our lives over to God and he planned the caper. and it's true. So I don't know now why some stay sober and why some don't, in that psychodynamic sense. The only thing I've been able to deduce through all the years of my sobriety is that the one thing that the people who stay sober have in common with each other that they don't have with those who don't stay sober is that the ones who stay silver don't drink. Thank you that probably is too profound uh but that is as what i have been able to discover the people who stay sober don't drink now everything else we talk about up here is filler it wouldn't do any good to talk about the physical allergy you've either got it or you haven't and what you think about it is irrelevant now they're always amazing to me the newcomer sitting there wondering if he's thinking about whether he's an alcoholic what the hell difference does it make what he thinks about the subject? Either is or he isn't. A diabetic's opinion of his condition is about as irrelevant a subject as one could have. You know, and it's so easy to identify as to whether you are or are you not an alcoholic. All you need do is ask yourself one question. Am I now or have I ever been in attendance at an AA meeting? If the answer to that is yes, you're an alcoholic, non-alcoholics don't come to AA. Now what would they come to AA for? Everybody knows about AA today. It's no mystery, police brutality being what it is. You can't lie down for a nap up on 10th Street at high noon without some cop giving you a list of meetings, you know. But social drinkers never come to Alcoholics Anonymous. What the devil would they do here? I couldn't even imagine what a social drinker was when I got here, despite the fact I was later to discover that my entire family is made up of low-bottom social drinkers. The sort of people, when you go to their home, they say, would you like to come in and have a drink before dinner? A drink before dinner. Couldn't believe they were serious. Trapped me several times. The very idea of drinking something as vile tasting as liquor and as expensive and then eat right on top of it. I never wanted one drink before anything. Oh, I mean, if somebody would say, would you like a shot while I'm mixing your drink? Yeah. But whiskey is about as rotten a stuff as you can put in your mouth and survive. And it's expensive. And yet they take one drink and sit down and eat. Oh, I don't mean my family only does that. It never does more. Sometimes on a festive occasion they might take two, three even. Then the ladies' eyes get a warm glow, their feet beat a little tattoo on the carpet. But if you say to them, will you have another? They say, no, no. I'm beginning to feel it. Think of the logic that underlies an observation like that. Something so damn vile and expensive, and the moment it begins to do that which God and man designed it to do, they quit. If there's any help for those poor devils, it lies outside our organization. See, we may have our faults and our foibles, but we're not utterly devoid of reason. When we drink intoxicants, we can proudly say we became intoxicated. I remember one of my relatives invited me into his home for a drink. Now, I'm just like all the rest of them emotionally, mentally, no difference. See, sometimes people talk about their hang-ups as if this were their alcoholism. Some of them even quaintly call it an ism. That seems to be an in thing here recently. But those things are not your alcoholism directly. They are things you're going to have to treat with, but in and of itself it isn't your alcoholismo. If you feel insecure, if you occasionally wake up in the middle of the night thinking you can't make it, that you're not adequate, that's not because you're an alcoholic. That's because you are human. Everyone doubts themselves. I'm sure the Caesars and the Pharaohs awoke in the mid-night thinking, what am I doing with this stupid laurel wreath? I'm no Caesar. Just a poor Italian kid trying to get along. This isn't your alcoholism. Your alcoholism is this phenomenon of craving resulting from taking the first drink and then the obsession is going to make you go back and try her again. Now, non-alcoholics don't have those things. That's all. But I remember this one relative. He invited me into his house for a drink, and as we passed over the portal, he said, now let's see, I've got a jug in here somewhere. He, honest to God, did not know where in the house he kept his stash. It was that insignificant to him. All he remembered was that they had had a lot of people over for Christmas, and to make sure there was plenty of hooch for everybody bought a whole fifth. And the party not having gotten too raucous, there was naturally some left. You recall the toasted New Year's. You didn't know where in the house it was. Now I knew at all times where my jugs were as long as there was anything left in them. I forgot empties from time to time to my chagrin, but I knew all times where my glass was and how much was in it. I knew where your glass was and how much was in it. But it is only in this respect that we're different. By the way, I am sure at this sort of a meeting there probably are some Al-Anons here. I really don't mean to make fun of the non-alcoholic. They are not at fault. They seem to have been born that way. I'm not sure. But I've described all I know about alcoholism caused by drinking alcohol, nothing else. Now you couldn't give much of a talk based on that alone. So what we do in most of our pitches is we describe those types of maladjustments we have with our society, with the members of our tribe, that cause our emotional barometer to get set for a spell of storm that drives us out to drink again despite all of the evidence about what's going to happen. That's what we do. Now, the way we work on those things is just about as simple as our disease itself. At every meeting, like the Chinese water torture, they read a portion of our book called How It Works. now that's how we stay sober that's really it you know the steps in the book Bill wrote the book when he was only sober three and a half years everybody else had been sober one year and they said these are the steps we took now assuming they weren't lying to us when did they take them in the first year that was all they had available They didn't know anything about staying sober 10, 20, 30, 40 years. They had no idea of the gurus that were going to flower and blossom on our program. They hadno understanding of the paramilitary groups that weregoing to form in Los Angeles. Well, the steps are very simple. You could not become confused concerning them nor how they worked unless you went to a step-study meeting. Really. By the way, I'm not against step study meetings. If by that it is a way of gathering together and sharing your experience in connection with the steps, it's fine, but so many of them turn out to be analytical things where they get in and say, what's the difference between a shortcoming and a character defect? Not one damn thing. Bill just wanted to show he knew two synonyms for the same thing. you know but they analyze it as if they were reading scripture the most amazing thing i was a meeting one time we had a step study group uh out there in the valley where i used to attend one of those where they have one each week they have a step so if you happen to come in on the second step you have to stay drunk for three months before you find out how to stop drinking but everybody speaks everybody speaks and i came in with one night i remember and they were on the fourth step and i said let's have a showing of hands before we begin of those who've taken the fourth step well out of the 30 people or so that were there about six hands went up and i said i would suggest tonight that we hear only from the people who've taking this fourth step do we really give a damn what somebody thinks about something he's never tried you know and they used to call me sweet don Don, the well-beloved, I think it was. Oh, how I was hated. I mean, three of them got drunk to show me and the others went home and took an inventory. It was just furious. But when all else fails, try the program. That's been my work. Now that's really all I know. Now when the speakers talk, they can't talk about their physical allergy because that takes about 10 seconds. So they talk about their particular problems and what they had to do to resolve them. See, the non-alcoholics have the same problems we do. It's simply they don't have to resolve them. Now when you hear a speaker get up, he will talk about his antisocial attitudes. They're not his alcoholism, but they are his problems that must be resolved if he wants to stay sober. Other people get up and they call it alchism nowadays. You know, a person will get up and say, oh, when I came on this program my alcoholism was so wild I couldn't drive on the freeway. Well, inability to drive on the freeway is a phobia. It has nothing to do with alcoholism. There are a lot of non-alcoholics like that. And we had one guy down there who was talking about, oh, he said that he was a pool maintenance man and whenever he needed any money he would just take one of his customers' motors out and tell them it had burnt out and he had to replace it. And he would take it back to his house, paint it, and put it back in and charge him $200. And he said, but that's the way we alcoholics are. I thought the hell that's the way we alcoholics are that's how thieves are I was just incensed because my pool man just a week earlier had come to me God I hope he's not an alcoholic I think he's Japanese actually but But that's not alcoholism. I remember one time arguing to a judge at a guy who was an accountant, and he did beautiful work. He got awards for his manner of taking care of the corporation's needs. But when he would start drinking, the pen would become mightier than the sword, and he would take off with a check protector and run until they netted him. And after one particular spell, He came back, and I was telling the judge, I said, Judge, this man is an alcoholic. And it's when he's drinking the problem arises. I think rather than punishing him, we should do something about his drinking. And the judge said, Mr. Gates, within a mile of this courtroom, there must be 5,000 alcoholics. But there's really damn few forgers. You know, I don't think they'll understand us sometimes, these people. Or maybe they will. That's the problem. I remember another time arguing to a judge. The guy had his 8502, and I said, Your Honor, it's ridiculous to punish this poor alcoholic. He wouldn't think of driving drunk when he's sober. That went over very well, too. But what the speaker talks about are his particular hang-ups and how he has had to work the steps in connection with them in order to maintain sobriety. It's amazing, most of the times that people tell stories, you don't have to be even particularly disturbed. The people who say, I was an alcoholic long before I took a drink, and then they will give you examples of it. Invariably, they are the sort of thing that afflict all mankind. Just the other day, a person almost said in these words, even before I began drinking, when I was nine or ten years old, I Was Terribly Immature. They say, there really aren't too many ten-year-olds who have it all together, really. You do not have to be crazy to be a member of this program. There's no handicap, by the way, if you are. But you don't have to mentally ill to be member of the fellowship. In fact, But with many of us, at least it was with me, I have taken inventory and as near as I can tell the primary problem I had was that I began drinking in my teens. Now adolescence is a form of insanity. The perils of puberty are almost beyond description. That is the most hideous time you will ever have in your entire life. don't have to go to a concentration camp to see man's inhumanity to man. Just watch children in action. And when you're in that twilight zone trying to slip from infancy into adulthood and you don't know who you are or what you are and your glands have gone mad and your body is growing and your mind is a part of your body, if your body has screwed up, your mind has screwed up. And in that weird, wild condition we begin drinking. Now alcohol is a great preservative. you can put a specimen on a bottle of alcohol find it 20 years later unchanged you put an adolescent into a bottle of alcohol or alcohol into an adolescent and come back and visit them 30 years later he will have grown gray perhaps wrinkled his vocabulary will have increased he may be uneducated beyond his intelligence but emotionally he's going to be an adolescent It was just wild. And in essence, that's what I found when I quit drinking. Nothing particularly mysterious. I would have wished it was. I thought I had all kinds of strange and weird disorders. Wasn't so. Just immature. Just didn't want to go through the problem that the rest of mankind has. No, there really is no reason why nature and the universe should walk on tiptoe not to upset my tender psyche, drunk or sober. But that really was about all there was to it. Now, it's not easy. I've had to work those steps very diligently. But nobody sees those. By the way, this is the one organization where if you're really working it in one sense, nobody sees it. Nobody knows. I can tell you that when things get fouled up, I sit down with pencil and paper and make a list of my attitudes towards it. I put down things on paper that if I had an ounce of pride, I wouldn't confess to my mother. And I do it in black and white. Now, if you believe I do that, you have great faith because none of you ever saw me do it. I'm the only one who knows if I've done this program. When things get really fouled up, I get right down on my knees and pray, despite the fact that when I arrived here, I was a devout atheist. believed in no god with a capital n and worshiped it but i have never been able there's something about that posture to this day after all these years of sobriety when i get down on my knees i don't know if there's anything listening but i change i have ever been able to approach my higher power standing erect looking him straight in the eye like two equals nor have i been able to reach him lying in bed with my hand on my groin meditating it's only when i get down into that position that all animal form adopts that position of surrender that you bow before the king that the like two animals when they meet each other you know two dogs or something two wolves if one of them has wandered into the other one's territory without a word they communicate one of them goes things come out her hair goes up and the other woman looks at him and understands he doesn't say i wonder what he means by that but they they know and if he doesn't want trouble he cowers now i get down on my knees and pray you know i have no idea whether anything is listening but i come up changed you know it's almost impossible to stay arrogant on your knees i'm too big a man to put up with that sort of you change and it works now i don't do this because i am strong disciplined or anything else I do it because the alternative is drunkenness. Now, the non-alcoholic doesn't have to change. He can hang on to that dubious luxury of resentment and self-pity. You see them walking around the courthouses, their knuckles white, jaws tense, looking out for number one. It's going to get even. It's gonna get that bitch on the stand and make her admit she's an unfit mother right in front of the children. God, they're insane out there. But they don't have to quit drinking. Nobody gets arrested while driving while pissed off. Nobody gets picked up for walking around a common mope. Drunkenness is what forces us to do those things. And it works. It literally works. now since i have been sober i have had the most wild exciting life beyond anything i could have comprehended see because the newcomer thinks alcohol was what gave him freedom and an opportunity to do things it did not it enslaved him and made it impossible for him to do virtually anything i was very dignified when i drank i had to be because if I acted silly, you might think booze was getting to me. In order to protect my right to drink, I was very dignified in appearance. It is after I got sober that I realized I can do anything I want now. It is like some God did indeed create this universe with its infinite variety of experiences and sensations and then said, take what you want and then pay for it. Now sober, you're going to pay for drunk you won't you'll change the subject with another drunk but here you do it and you can find out whether you enjoy it or not I was one time speaking down at the rehabilitation center for narcotics down in Los Angeles and it's very hard to speak in a room where the people are there by coercion there's an invisible line a wall as it were between you and they're sitting there yeah save me you know type thing And I've been on both sides, so I understand it. But for some reason, it just saddened me to see these young guys in the prime of life, locked up like animals. And they're just sitting in there. And I was trying to tell them, good Lord, get out and live. Do anything you want. And anything that you've ever dreamt about, even in the middle of the night, that delirium is a disease of the light. And some of the wild and crazy things that come to my mind, and some most noble, grandiose, even some rather lurid. But try everything. Try it without chemical courage, and see if you like it. Free at last, as the old song says. Free at least. Great God Almighty, we can be free at last. You know, I ended, and there was one clap, and then back to the ward they went. You know how enthusiastic they are there. And I drove home thinking I failed. I don't know what the hell I tried to carry them into. I read in the paper, less than a week later, they rioted and invaded the women's dormitory. And I thought to myself, power, power! I took personal credit. The next time I spoke there, I spoke on the theme, the truth will set you free ultimately, not immediately. but it is true this program has taught me to laugh about all the things I used to cry about if you don't learn to laugh at yourself you're going to miss the greatest joke in your generation the more serious I get about how the world shall function the more ludicrous I am if I can just stand back and look at it this little fella standing there before the juggernaut of society waving his fist at it thou shalt not pass absurd but you're free to do whatever you want now my life has been good almost beyond comprehension now that doesn't mean there hasn't been tragedy in it i don't want to discourage the newcomer utterly by making it sound like it's all fun it isn't no newcomer ever met was looking for happiness or contentment newcomers are looking for cause for complaint justification usually but you can learn to endure happiness really it's not that bad in fact when you stop and think about it what's the worst thing that could happen to a person who tried our program the very worst what's the worst that could happened he'd spend the rest of his life in full possession of his faculties now with some faculties that may not be a bargain but as far as we know we get one trip on this blue white globe we call the earth only one go around as far as we know. And the worst that could happen would be that we would be aware of the voyage, be present and accounted for. You wouldn't be hip and slick and cool anymore. I mean, you wouldn't able to say, what's happening? I mean hell, you'd know. But beyond that, everything is ours. We can try it all. I don't have to be distinguished anymore. I don't have to be careful. I just work the program. Somebody the other day told me, I don' know if it's over five or ten years, he was saying, Don, you always seem so enthusiastic about everything you do. You know, why is your program better than mine? I said, I don''t think it is. Maybe we just do different things. See, because I have... I remember I took my first free-fall parachute just before I became a grandfather. No particular reason, except I want to live. I wantto try what there is out there. I got through male menopause by racing motorcycles in the desert. Other guys, as they go into menopaus, try to do macho things, but not me. I just took up motorcycle racing out in the dessert. The only copy of the big book they used to see out around Barstow some Sundays. If I have thought about it, I've tried it. nothing that I fantasized about when I was drinking I have not explored sober most of the things I wouldn't repeat they weren't that damn much fun I used to think people were trying to thwart my pleasure they weren' t they were trying to forewarn me but that's not much fun you can do it in that position but it hurts your back Saturday night audiences. I know. That, by the way, is something that is hard to learn to do when you first get sober, too, because I mentioned adolescence as being the time we start drinking. And at that moment, sex is rearing its head, beautiful, wondrous as it is, but very frightening. and we get them confused. The last of my kids is passing through his teens and he subscribed to Playboy magazine and I was looking through it and in there are voluptuous ladies holding bottles of liquor. I mean, every advertisement is a sexual advertisement combined with liquor. Every damn one of them. You know, it's no wonder we get it confused. It's no longer the case that it's a wonder we have a hard time staying sober because sex is very frightening. I remember my first experience to this day with terror and I was by myself at the time but things have been so good for me on this program and i have not changed that much see people come in and they think that they're going to change utterly in fact they will even say that you'll hear people say oh yes i came on the program immediately did an about face there's nothing about me going to be the same haha i changed my way of walking and the way i strut my stuff yeah that may be the way it feels from within and it does but from without it doesn't look like that every newcomer i ever saw just like me dug in his heels refusing bitterly to change but maybe we could rip him one degree off his former collision course with disaster but if he stay one degree of course long enough you'll be so far removed from where you were before in just a few short years is to be non-recognizable but it feels like a total about faith you know we had a newcomer come on one time he said yes i came on this program a few months ago and i immediately gave my life over to God and did a 360 degree turn and I thought your geometry ain't so hot fella but you're closer to the truth than you know because we do not change all that much it embarrasses me so often how little I have changed I have always been wildly enthusiastic and obsessive moderation i now use to the extent that i don't hurt other people with my behavior at least i try not to but i'm still wildly into whatever i do see a fanatic is anything that's doing something a week before i start talking to a gentleman here about oh i guess it's been four or five years ago now I had to quit smoking. Now, I had smoked three or four packs of camels for 35 years, and I knew I was going to die smoking. In fact, I rather pictured taking a couple of tokes posthumously. I could see them, we're going to close the coffin, Mr. Gates, would you put that gun? I couldn't quit. I absolutely couldn't quite. I hated to see somebody come into a room would quit smoking. I just hated them. I knew they were going to say something healthful. And yet the time came, and the doctors gave me a mantra to repeat, emphysema, and then just like drinking. When you're ready to quit smoking, it'll be the easiest thing you've ever done in your life. Absolutely, oh, I got down on my knees and barked like a dog for a month, but other than that, it was nothing. And it actually was kind of fun, because I was so badly hooked that the withdrawal symptoms changed my sense of perspective and timing. I can remember I was lifted up my hand once and it looked like my thumb was going to come in my eye. Crazy. But they told me I had to do something about my condition, and so they suggested getting into running. now all of my life I have despised running I knew if I were to make a list of do nots I would put running somewhere near the head should such a horrible thing even occur to me I've always seen people running old men usually with knobby gnarled knees brown like roots along the sides of roads with headbands on and I would look at them and think poor devils that it should come to that now i'm one of them now the craze hit the crazed hit about a i don't know some years ago and i would i would see these people running like my own neighborhood running you know and i usually hairy sort of people and you know i would think god i hope they don't steal anything now i am amazed at how many distinguished ladies and gentlemen one meets out on the street you never need to be alone again all you need to do is go out and draw a white line on the street and they'll start warming up ready for the race. Because I tried it and I couldn't do it at all. I could hardly go half a block, but I continued to pursue it. If nothing else, we're stubborn. We're gluttons for pain. Anybody who doubts our discipline has not watched us. The reason they think we're undisciplined is because we go back to drinking so often. Now, the reason they think we are undisciplined is because they think our objective is sobriety. Discipline you wouldn't believe. But I pursued it and pretty soon I got to where I could go two miles and I discovered a miraculous thing. You can get high doing it. I was going out to give a talk and as I was coming down the walk toward my car, I caught myself skipping. And I, Jesus, as soon as I realized it, I stopped and I thought, oh, I hope the neighbors didn't see that because I didn't skip as a boy. And I thought what's wrong here? And I realized that what was wrong was I had just completed about an half hour or an hour earlier a rather strenuous four mile run and I was high. good lord people had never told me this see people don't know how to approach certain ones of us people had always told me that running was good for me i wouldn't walk across the street if i thought it was good for me the way to ensure i will never read a book is to tell me it's good for me now running that's something that's painful they made me run laps when i goofed off in training in sports or they made me double time in the army if I didn't behave. And I had no idea that you could run slow enough that it didn't hurt, and then you could get high. Well, once I discovered that, if two miles will get you high, how about four, eight, sixteen? In less than a year, I was running half marathons. I had stress fractures in both feet. Bursitis to the hip and my back went out. I didn�t have a moment free from pain after I got healthy. now I haven't changed a hell of a lot haven't changed a hell of a lot you know obsessions are still with me in that sense by the way if any of you make a mistake in thinking that I'm swift or see I use the word running because that's how it looks inside my head those of you who were to observe my locomotion on the outside might not even be kind enough to call it jogging. It might be more of a trudge along the road of happy destiny, sort of a survival shuffle as it were. But inside where I live, I'm running. In fact, that young son of mine, he said to me one time after I'd started, he says, oh dad, I saw you running down by the river today. I said, oh how was that? And he said, well my friend and I were walking to the store and we passed you. You did not. How sharper than a serpent's tooth is the sting of an ungrateful child, really. That's the way I am. I haven't changed all that much. Here recently, I was under consideration for a rather extended period of time for a position that I had always aspired to. And it's a very hard period for me. I've gotten used to and can handle adroitly a sense of impending doom, but a sense of impeding success, boy, that's a bear, because I don't know whether the higher power can handle success. But I had to, in the course of it, go before a triumvirate of rather important people for an initial examination, and it brought me up to how little I have changed. I think it was the second grade, the first report card I can remember anyhow. It may not have been the first record card, but it was critical. To this day, I take constructive criticism like I have always taken it, like a knife right in the back is how I take it. And this teacher had given me rather good grades, but she had written in there, Donald sometimes talks too much and doesn't listen. And I thought, huh. And I've maintained that same opinion about the higher education rest of my life, I guess. By the way, I'm not against schooling as long as it doesn't interfere with your education. But I went before these men, and the point of it was, among others, they had sent out questionnaires to a lot of people, and back had come answers. And they said, we're here to give you an opportunity to reply to any criticisms that might have been contained in these. He said, actually they're remarkably eulogistic, almost all of them, but there is one odd one here that you might like to reply too. It says, Mr. Gates sometimes talks too much and doesn't listen. Fifty years! Fifty Years! They said, do you have anything to say to that? Well, that imp or the perverse that sits on my shoulder and mocks me at all times what i wanted to say was i'm sorry would you repeat that i wasn't i was thinking about something else uh no i didn't say that but i said something almost as bad i said that's true but i'm working on it they will never understand aa society will never understand it because everything we are taught in aa is almost the antithesis of what we've been taught all our lives about how to succeed. We hear things, you know, take the stock thing, how to get ahead. You put your best foot forward. Think about that. The implication is that you have a worse foot over here, a gnarled, knobby, corn-ridden old devil. And after you get them in at a disadvantage, then you whip her out and show it to them. Everything we do is like that. AA says you show them both right off the bat. If they wouldn't want you knowing all about you, you don't want to be there. In some ways, perhaps I shouldn't talk about this, but in another, I have always believed that the triumphs that occur in AA, the joys in AA should be shared as well as the bad times. If I'm feeling bad in my life, I'll tell you about it, podium or otherwise. I have also always resented speakers who get up and tell about how they arrived at AA and everything else has been wonderful. They usually arrive at AA about five minutes to ten and then everything has been great since and then they'll call me at one in the morning to say, Don, I think I'm going to shoot myself. Why didn't you tell about it on the podium? The audience in a meeting is made up of people, not newcomers. Most people in an audience are sober somewhere between six months and 16 years. They're middle-aged. And the thing is, what happens after you get here? How do you deal with these various things? Because I've had pain. God, I've Had moments. That wasn't a particularly a good one. You know, I've had moments more painful than anything I ever had drinking because you can be in exquisite agony and you will. You're going to sober up. And like every two-legged beast to walk out of the forest, people are going to die. They're goingto reject you. You'regoing to be frustrated and thwarted. It's simply that now I know when things are not going my way, it doesn't occur to me they're going wrong. Theyre just not going my way and i try to relax and go with them not that it's easy very hard you'll be in cubicles of pain where there seem to be not only no exits but no seams even in the wall of pain that surrounds you and your safety valve of drunkenness has been welded over what do you do no way to relieve pressure tension you just stand there and hurt for me what happened was when i could bear it no longer i had my first spiritual experience 10 years sober there's any little agnostics atheists here shouldn't be at this meeting, but if there are, don't worry about it. You can stay sober indefinitely, even if you're an atheist, as long as you don't drink. I hope you won't be as slow as I am, by the way, getting a spiritual thing, but it does happen. But I've also had moments of great joy, incredible ones. And the one that is so with me at the moment because it just happened was that the reason that these guys were examining me was that the governor had submitted my name as a possible appointee to the appellate bench here. And I had to, in the course of it, give this state bar examination committee my entire life's history. Now, when they had first won some of the justices that I know had wanted to put my name forward, I said, no, I don't want to do that. What I have done is unforgivable. i have drowned my honor in a shallow cup i have lost my ability ever to proceed in the future they're not going to appoint someone like me no one even knows about me my work is as anonymous as is my outside life and no one is going to take a chance on somebody like me and in addition i have grandchildren whose parents weren't born when i got into trouble and i don't want all of this brought up to the disgrace of everyone. And they said, we still think it's possible. Society has a statute of limitations for all things. And I went down and talked to my mentor, Chuck C., and he said, who are you to decide what God's work is for you? Why don't you let those decide who are capable and appointed to decide? And so great fear and trepidation I did. And after a few months, my name was actually chosen among a very select few to be submitted, and i had to tell them all about myself and they don't understand this they said we want the names of two or three hundred judges and lawyers as references i said all you're going to get are the justices of the second district court of appeal who've been my clients over the past few years while i've worked with them and they can speak of me but no one else is going to know what i do for them or anything about me they said what about all of the judges and the lawyers below you've worked on all those decisions thousands of them i said yes but they don'T know who i am If they know who I am, I would have failed in my work. And they said, well, what about this AA that you're into? Aren't there judges and lawyers in there? I said, thicker than fleas, but you're going to get none of their names from me. And they asked, do you want this job? They never saw anybody take that kind of an attitude. Do you want the job? I said yes, but not at the expense of getting drunk and tearing your courthouse up. so they don't understand but that's the way i approached it i told them the total truth when they called me in and asked me those silly questions mr gates talks too much and doesn't right that's why i told him i see i'm working on it but it shows i haven't made that much progress 50 years you know half a century a quarter of this nation's history, and I still talk too much. And I told them that. And by gosh, they gave me extraordinarily high reports. And then about a little over a month ago the governor called me and he said, He said, I'm going to appoint you. You know, now, whatever you may think of our remarkable young governor, and God knows I have, I told him, I said, you are a man of rare courage. That just can't happen. How can that happen? how do you go from the stygian darkness that i was in to a position like that it can't happen there's just no way you couldn't put that on a soap without them honking you off the air cannot happen and then he did it and then i had to go before a confirmation hearing and that's made up of chief justice rose bird and attorney general Duke Majan. Now those two people haven't agreed on anything since the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. And I went in and gave them parts of my story, and they voted unanimously to have this drunk sit in the appellate courts. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that unbelievable? Can't happen. Can't happen. Now, I will need to program this happened by the way just last week, I was sworn in last week or Friday, but now I will need to program far more desperately than I needed it previously because we get drunk more, I suspect, out of ego inflation than we do out of disaster My wife, a beautiful wife I have here. We're talking about disasters. About five years ago, my family broke up and I was suddenly left with a teenage son and we two bachelors rattled around in the house for quite a while. Anybody who tells you that when he is left with his teenagers, they find communication one-on-one will lie about other things too. He lived in the front part of the house. I lived in back. The only time I saw him was when I would throw money in the hall and when he would come out but I survived and it did not break my heart and I had faced the worst and here a few years ago afterwards I met a young lady in fact I'd known her when she first came on the program I'd looked at her and said it's good to see you young people coming on stick around I didn't know how desperately I would need her she was the secretary of a meeting up at Ventura and I was speaking up there and they always say to take something from every meeting so I took her and she has 15 years sobriety I don't monkey with newcomers but she's still atrociously young but she seems to like antiques in fact doesn't even complain the feeling of old age creeping on her at night But last Saturday, after I was sworn in, she graduated from law school. She'd gone to law school after sobering up. and I went up to attend her graduation, and she introduced me as Justice so-and-so of the 2nd District Court of Appeal and so on. Well, when the Master of Ceremonies rose to begin the graduation, he introduced all the celebrities in the audience. I was the biggest celebrity they had. Now, nothing like that has ever happened to me. They said, we'd like to introduce among our guests Justice so and so. I stood up and waved at them, healing. I wish I'd had a big ring. I'd have had them come forward. They treat you differently. While I was waiting in a confirmation hearing, I kept getting all kinds of letters in the mail. I got one that said, Office of the District Attorney, Criminal Courts Building. And I thought, oh God, it was too good to be true. I told everybody about it, but they're going to send it to the press and they're gonna make me look like a fool. you know and i opened it up and it said to the honorable donald n gates if i can be of any service to you in any way please don't hesitate calling me john vandy camp district attorney i thought now you're sucking around where were you 25 years ago when i needed you and that's the miracle of it see from time to time i'll be sitting on the supreme court and 25 years ago that body was meeting to decide what to do about me how does that happen it's a miracle and where does it happen aa and a will have to continue to work even harder now because as i say after the announcement there, after her graduation, all of the lawyers and the Superior Court judges came swarming up around me. And I've only been there less than 24 hours. I'm not used to this sensation. When they speak to you, they actually lower their heads. You make some banal remark about the weather and they say, that's well put, Judge. Everything within me want to say, shucks. So I need this program more desperately now than I did previously. And I share this with you. Perhaps I shouldn't have talked about it so much, but the reason that I am standing so tall tonight, and I really believe I am, is because I'm standing on your backs. Thank you for watching.