Change Your Actions and Your Attitude Will Change — Art Cole Had It Backwards from Every Teacher – Matt J.

About This Speaker Tape

Matt J. from Santa Monica tells the story of a kid who never wanted to be where he was. Both parents alcoholic, asthmatic from birth, wired on childhood amphetamines, fantasizing in a Naugahyde chair watching Bullwinkle — he was an accident-prone, guilty, functionally illiterate kid who learned in sixth grade that "my father was drunk last night" was a magic excuse that got teachers to pat him on the back. By fifteen he found the real answer on New Year's Eve: a fifth of scotch, a handful of stolen Valium and Tedrol, two friends passed out, him staring into the fireplace feeling for once that he had complete information.

The middle of the tape is pure family-disease wreckage. He moves in with his vodka-drunk father in Hermosa Beach, builds a philosophy of better-living-through-chemistry around Ripple and mini-uppers and concert-hall hash, and then his blackout-rage mother moves back in. He comes home from surfing to find her in the kitchen sink smashing his father's Sony with a hammer, his father in pajamas saying "honey, don't do that." She breaks records out the back door — Jimi Hendrix, Jethro Tull, everything but the Christmas albums — and he starts sleeping in his car.

His parents sober up first. He notices his father grew a tan and his bald patches filled back in, but the anger in him is already in survival mode. After a detour through Sears tire department (sniffing vulcanizing glue, stealing $500 of merchandise), a sponsor named Art Cole tells him something he's never heard: change your actions and your attitude will change. He gets drunk one more time at 21, wakes up at Sambo's over 50 cups of coffee on May 27, 1973, and hasn't had a drink since.

The last third is about learning to be successful in AA — a harder lesson than getting sober. Sponsors Clancy and later John A. walk him through a BMW-parts career he didn't ask for, an Al-Anon wife and stepson, making amends to Sears, a reading disability he works around by listening to the Big Book on tape, his mother's terminal cancer turning into fourteen years of sobriety and total remission, and a nephew Stuart already six arrests in. At thirty-two, sober a third of his life, he says he used to think he was sentenced to AA — now he wouldn't trade it.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opening — Matt Johnson from Santa Monica, thanks committee, thanks host Bill and Dorothy
• 2:30 Childhood asthma, shots of adrenaline, prescribed Tedrol amphetamine, fantasizing in a Naugahyde chair watching Bullwinkle and John Wayne
• 6:00 Sixth-grade teacher pats him on the back after he uses 'my father was drunk last night' as an excuse — he realizes he's found the out that makes him a functioning illiterate
• 10:30 New Year's Eve at 15 — fifth of scotch, stolen Valium, handful of Tedrol, puts both friends to sleep and stares into the fireplace feeling complete for the first time
• 22:00 Mother smashes father's Sony TV in the kitchen sink with a hammer; father in pajamas says 'honey, don't do that' and she destroys it
• 34:00 Corpus Christi surfing trip — no waves in the Gulf Coast, stays drunk on Everclear, long-hair-in-Texas hostility, splits back to California
• 42:00 Art Cole at the Ohio Street Tuesday-night meeting tells him 'change your actions and your attitude will change' — first time he's heard it that direction
• 46:30 May 27, 1973 — sobers up at Sambo's over 50 cups of coffee after a three-day Budweiser run, hasn't had a drink since, age 21
• 58:00 Clancy orders him to take the Volkswagen/Porsche parts job he tried to turn down; boss Hans later gets sober through the AA pipeline Matt sets up
• 72:00 Mother's cancer diagnosis (6 months to live) turns into 14 years sober and total remission; Matt closes on gratitude and being 'honored' to come out