Almost Anybody’s Judgment Is Infinitely Better Than Yours – Vince Y.

About This Speaker Tape

Vince Y. from Upland, California speaks at the West Portland Group in October 2004 at 32 years sober. He opens with his first AA meeting in November 1965 in a Presbyterian church basement in Long Beach, fresh out of the Long Beach City Jail in a filthy T-shirt, sitting next to a Texan named Tex who handed him pamphlets and the 20 questions test. He dismissed the Twelve Steps as pseudo-Protestant pap — he was Irish Catholic, Jesuit-educated, and sure his case was different. He stayed physically sober for three and a half years while refusing to take the steps, and his alcoholism got worse right in the middle of AA.

He describes a privileged Irish Catholic upbringing as the prince of the family, his parents dying within a week of each other when he was 12, being valedictorian but stealing a priest's car before graduation, leaving Cornell mid-senior-year in a blackout to join the Navy, and ending up as the first physician's assistant in California. Depression in an East LA emergency room led him to Dexedrine and then Demerol, which ended with arrest, loss of his medical license, and the summer of 1972 drinking a half-gallon of vodka a day in an Inglewood apartment after his wife left. He came out of his last blackout driving a stolen hearse the wrong way up PCH on September 20, 1972.

His real recovery started in an $11-a-week room in Costa Mesa after hearing Norm A. speak, kneeling by the bed and praying 'God, please help me, I'm afraid and I'm alone.' He surrendered to a crazy but effective sponsor who ran a Skid Row mission, took his car keys, made him live there, and sent him out on the Wilshire bus every day in a three-piece suit to beg for his medical license back. On a Friday in June 1973, humiliated with chewing gum on his pants and certain he was going to drink, he ran into the administrator of the very hospital where he'd been arrested — within 60 days his license was restored and he was back in the same ER.

He closes with the good years: meeting his wife of 24 years who got sober while nursing her dying first husband, a career in rehabilitation counseling that collapsed from $300K to $30K in a year, a heart attack and bypass, and colon cancer last summer with chemo that nearly killed him in the City of Hope ICU on six liters of oxygen. Surrounded by AAs and Al-Anons who fed him Ensure and loved him through it, he arrives at his conclusion: after every workshop and seminar, AA comes down to one thing — we take care of each other.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Vince Y. from Upland, California opens at the West Portland Group — packed room, certain electricity
• 3:00 First AA meeting, November 1965, Presbyterian church basement in Long Beach — Tex, the pamphlets, and the 20 questions test
• 10:00 Dismisses the Twelve Steps as pseudo-Protestant pap — Jesuit education, Aquinas and Augustine, 'my case is different'
• 14:00 Irish Catholic childhood as the prince of the family, parents dying within a week when he was 12
• 20:00 Stole a priest's car, joined the Navy in a blackout from Manhattan, ended up a corpsman and then PA
• 27:00 Okinawa VD-control duty — driving bar to bar, drinking free Hagen Haag pinch
• 35:00 East LA emergency room — Dexedrine, then Demerol, then arrest and loss of medical license
• 42:00 Last blackout September 20, 1972 — stolen hearse, wrong way up PCH at 6 a.m., screaming woman in the passenger seat
• 50:00 $11-a-week room, Norm A. speaking at Balboa, on his knees: 'God, please help me, I'm afraid and I'm alone'
• 58:00 The Skid Row mission sponsor, chewing gum on the suit, and the chance encounter outside Godfather 2 that restored his medical license